


Mine

by ObsidianPen



Series: Haunted and Hunted [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A 'Voldemort finds out Harry is a horcrux' story, Dark, M/M, Post OoTP AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:32:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17604014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianPen/pseuds/ObsidianPen
Summary: After the incident at the Department of Mysteries, Lord Voldemort discovers what Harry Potter is. He reaches out to his human horcrux through dreams, and the course of the Second Wizarding War is forever altered.A dark fairy tale.





	1. Aware

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Owlsnape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlsnape/gifts).



> This series is dedicated to Owly, for being my biggest supporter/fan/friend. You can thank her for the fact that this series is coming back into existence. Seriously. She spoils me way more than I deserve.

 

Harry heard the whispers from beyond the veil: a chorus of soft, breathy please. Calling to him, beckoning him towards it. One repeated word.

_Harry… Harry… Harry…_

The seductive lure of death.

His nightmares brought him to the Department of Mysteries often. When Harry Potter had lost his godfather weeks ago, the closest thing to family he had ever known, he lost himself. The fire was extinguished, his fighting spirit was gone. The Boy Who Lived was a hollow shell of a person.

The whispers of death did not fill him with fear. They filled him with longing. Yet never in his dreams did Harry actually approach the dais with the promise that, should he pass through the veil, his suffering would end. That he would see Sirius again.

Until tonight.

Harry knew he was in a dream, yet he also knew that these were no ordinary nightmares. It was a dark and powerful magic that pulled at him, and Harry felt certain that if he passed through the tattered fabric before him in this state, he would never return to the land of the living. The Chosen One would simply never wake.

Harry took a deep, steadying breath before stepping forward. The old cloth danced against his skin, surprisingly soft, moving as though it were caught in a gentle breeze. But the air in the vast chamber was still.

The whispers became faster, almost excited as he approached.

_Harry… Harry… Harry…_

"Harry."

The last word was not from beyond the veil. It was a piercing, high-pitched voice which called to him from behind. A familiar voice. Harry turned to face him, fearless. One who has accepted death is afraid of nothing.

Lord Voldemort approached with purpose in his step. Dark, billowing robes and pale, bare feet, crimson eyes and snakelike features. Harry felt his lips twitch in a moment of ill-suited humor. How much time had he spent fearing this man? Running from him? He felt the need to do neither of those things now. A strange calm settled over Harry as he smiled at his prophesied enemy. Voldemort's red gaze narrowed, suspicious at the lack of concern.

"Step away from the veil, Harry," the Dark Lord said. It was an imposing tenor that surely would have demanded obedience elsewhere. But not now, not here.

Harry laughed."Why would I do that? Oh, because you would like to do the honors. Right." He held his arms out wide on either side of himself, smiling widely. "Well, what are you waiting for? If you think it will work, kill me. Strike down your mortal enemy in his dream."

Voldemort, however, did not pull his wand from his robes, nor did he make any other indication that he was going to strike. "I am not here to kill you, Harry Potter," he said quietly.

"That's a shame." Harry sighed. He turned to look back towards the veil.

A sudden, vice-like grip ensnared his forearm. In a movement that was so rapid his vision blurred, Harry's was pulled from the dais and he was flung backwards onto the stone floor. His elbow slammed into the ground, instantly causing his eyes to water and a hiss of pain to escape his lips.

Voldemort loomed over him. His forceful gaze sang of blood and rage and… something else, something that Harry couldn't place, but which burned with such an intensity that he felt adrenaline explode in his veins.

That, in and of itself, was impressive, Harry realized. For weeks, he had felt nothing. For weeks, he had been empty, cold, numb.

He certainly felt something now. Harry’s heart leapt into his throat as the Dark Lord advanced on him.

"What—"

"I know what you are, Harry Potter,” Voldemort interrupted. His voice was icy and dark, and his eyes gleamed. “Your life belongs to me. Death will never touch you."

Harry simply gaped for a moment. "What… What are you talking about?" he finally choked out, attempting to push himself to his feet. Before he could, an invisible force yanked him upwards, and he was suspended in midair, directly in front of the Dark Lord. His feet hovered inches off the ground and his hands were bound to his sides. Trapped. Harry struggled to move them as Voldemort, crimson gaze now level with his own, approached. He was practically prowling as he came nearer, and the look in his eyes was predatory as they shamelessly roamed over Harry's entire body, finally settling on his scar. Harry swallowed hard. He felt extremely exposed at the way he was being examined.

Long, spidery fingers reached for his face, and though Harry tried desperately to turn his head to escape Voldemort's touch, that invisible force would not allow it. He waited for the pain, the horrible explosion of agony that would come from his scar at the physical contact—but it never came. Instead, in a surprisingly gentle gesture, Harry felt the hair on his forehead being brushed aside to reveal his scar to Voldemort's piercing stare more fully. A soft, feather-light touch.

There was a long pause in which neither of them said anything. The pounding of Harry's heart was so loud in his ears that he was certain the Dark Lord must hear it too. Finally, those blood-red eyes connected with his own again. Harry felt like he'd been struck with lightning at the intensity of Voldemort’s stare.

"The connection between us, our bond, is much deeper than I could have ever anticipated, Harry… But I know now..." He said the last words in a tone that bordered on seductive. Harry felt a thrill of anticipation as Voldemort trailed his fingertips from his forehead down his cheek, over the contours of face towards his chin—but the wandless magic prevented Harry from jerking away from his touch.

"Know w-what?" Harry managed to say, and he felt his face burn in embarrassment at his own stuttering. Voldemort's thin lips curved into a smile.

Before Harry could say or do anything else, before he could feel anything other than the briefest moment of panic, Harry was filled with the strangest emotion.

_Happiness._

Happiness, or something like it. Certainly the closest thing to joy that he had felt in weeks. It was impossible, it was absurd, but it was a genuine warmth that was flowing through him in gentle, light waves. Voldemort's smile widened.

"H-how are you doing that?" Harry gasped.

"Pain, pleasure, sorrow, _joy_ …" Voldemort crooned. Harry might have shuddered if he could move at all. "You feel what I feel, Harry. My happiness is your happiness… and right now, having you here in my grasp and seeing with certainty what you are, I am, indeed, pleased…"

Voldemort moved his hand so that his thumb was ghosting over Harry's lower lip, almost touching it, his red eyes following the curve of his mouth like he found it fascinating. Harry's pulse was racing, anticipation and that sick sense of joy coiling in his chest like a serpent.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Harry breathed, lightheaded.

Voldemort leaned in closer, choosing to ignore Harry’s question. He was examining him so intently that Harry felt like he was under a microscope; never before had he felt so helpless and frightened and utterly confused. The glint in Voldemort’s eyes was panic-inducing. Hungry, crimson irises that seemed to sear straight into his soul. Why was the Dark Lord looking at him like that?  

Harry was about to try and speak again, but the world suddenly shimmered, shifting slightly around them. The whispers from the veil went silent.

"You will wake soon," Voldemort said, the madness fading from his eyes. He spoke now in a detached voice. "But know this…"

He trailed his fingers along Harry's forehead again, this time tracing the lightning bolt scar as though it were a sacred mark. "I will come for you, my horcrux…"

Harry frowned; he had absolutely no idea what a horcrux was. Voldemort didn't offer an explanation. "I will come for you, and you will come to me, whether you wish to or not… because you are mine…"

The chamber shimmered and grew brighter, and Harry knew then that Voldemort was right—he was waking up. Right, because this was only a dream, none of this was real… Soon he would return to Privet Drive, back to his horrible, numbing existence with the Dursley's and no one and nothing to do but wallow in his own misery, completely alone…

Voldemort's gaze left his scar to stare into his eyes. The last words he repeated were laced with something that reminded Harry wildly of sympathy.

"I will come for you."


	2. Awake

Harry's ears were ringing.

At first, he was convinced that there was some outside force responsible for the sound. A drawn out, high-pitched tone that bordered on shrill. He slowly blinked as he eased into consciousness, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands. The world was blurry, and he felt more than a bit unsettled.

The ringing lingered as he fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table. What had he just been dreaming about? He was certain that it had been… significant. Jarringly so. He frowned as he attempted to recall the details. The physical realm around him came into focus when he put his glasses on moments later, but the dream refused to do the same.

Harry put his hands over his ears in an attempt to rid himself of the strange noise. It was slowly fading, like a note that had been struck on a xylophone—loud at first, but gradually becoming softer and softer. Harry focused on it in almost trance-like state of mind as he remained lying there, and for a moment he thought it reminded him of a voice...

A harsh clicking on his window startled him out of his reverie. He abruptly sat up and saw, to his surprise, a great barn owl tapping against the glass. The scroll in its talon through which vividly bright, green ink was visible caused his jaw to drop. Harry jumped up so quickly he nearly tumbled to the floor.

_I will come for you._

Those words, unbidden and inexplicable, floated to the forefront of his mind in the same tone as the ringing as he opened the window, snatching the tightly furled scroll from the now irritated-looking owl. Had he dreamed that Dumbledore was going to come for him? To rescue him from the horrible, monotonous life he'd been forced to endure at the Dursley's? He clumsily unfurled the letter, and for the first time in weeks he felt something akin to hope. The barn owl hooted distastefully before flying across the room, helping itself to some water from Hedwig's dish.

Harry's eyes darted across the parchment.

 

_Dear Harry,_

_If it is convenient for you, I shall call at number four, Privet Drive this coming Friday at eleven P.M. to escort you to the Burrow, where you have been invited to spend the remainder of your school holidays._

_If you are agreeable, I should also be glad of your assistance in a matter to which I hope to attend on the way to the Burrow. I shall explain this more fully when I see you._

_Kindly send your answer by return of this owl. Hoping to see you this Friday._

_I am, yours most sincerely,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

 

Harry stared, his eyes wide. For a moment, a beautiful moment, a real smile had started to form on his lips. Dumbledore was coming for him!

_I will come for you._

The words come to him again, only this time Harry heard it for what it was, and flashes of his dream came flickering into his mind—

_The dais and wavering fabric against his skin and red, red eyes—_

Harry dropped the letter as though had burned him. _A trap_ , he thought wildly as it fluttered to the floor. This was a trap. His dream—that nightmare—he had only just remembered moments of it, but he was positive that the voice had belonged to Lord Voldemort, and that promise had come from _him_ , not Dumbledore…

He must have seen into the Dark Lord's mind, then… accidentally caught wind of Voldemort's latest plot to find him through a dream again… and here it was, in the form of a letter from Dumbledore. Harry gawked down at the piece of parchment as though he expected it to get up and cast the killing curse on him itself.

The barn owl from the other side of the room hooted in impatience. The sound of the all but forgotten bird startled Harry so badly he let out a high pitch yelp. He cleared his throat as he tentatively picked up the letter and set it on his desk _. Get ahold of yourself,_ he thought _, it's not like it's going to explode._ At least, it wasn't very likely, he didn't think.

Could Voldemort actually contact him through a letter? That seemed like a very weak spot in his security system if he could, Harry mused. Surely he would have tried something sooner if this were the case? But maybe not, the Dark Lord was lying much lower last year, after all… But, well, if it wasn't him, then who would it be? There was no way that Harry truly believed it was Dumbledore, now. The man had never bothered to grace him with his presence before. And to be able to leave Privet Drive this early in the summer? After just a few weeks? Harry had never been allowed to do that… It was all far too good to be true…

The owl hooted again, this time soaring across the room to perch on his shoulder. It clicked its tongue in his ear, prodding. Right, the letter had said to send a response…

 _Well, sure,_ Harry thought bitterly. He scribbled a quick 'Yes' onto a piece of spare parchment, and the owl finally departed through the open window. He watched it disappear into the night sky. It would be day break soon, and Harry had only one clear thought in his mind:

He needed to leave Privet Drive. Today.

Hedwig was still out hunting, but she would be back soon… should he send a letter to Ron? To Hermione _? Ah, no,_ he thought. Obviously his mail was being watched, and if he were to write to his friends now, then Voldemort would know he knew, and he would come for him sooner instead…

But how was the Dark Lord planning on pulling this off, anyway? Harry paced, biting his lower lip as he thought furiously. Voldemort couldn't just show up here, of course, not with his mother's magic protecting him… Perhaps he was planning on having one of his Death Eaters take Polyjuice Potion; maybe he had gone to great lengths to acquire one of Dumbledore's long, silvery hairs… Harry had a crazed and fleeting image of Bellatrix showing up on his Aunt and Uncle's doorstep in the form of an old, bearded wizard with sparkling blue eyes. It wouldn't be the first time that Voldemort had used Polyjuice Potion to great effect. Harry nodded to himself as he remembered Barty Crouch Jr. Completely mad, yes, but completely genius, too…

Harry swallowed hard and made a decision. He would need to make a run for it.

Clothes, books, quills, and other various supplies began to be thrown into his trunk haphazardly, and Harry had been at it for nearly ten minutes when he froze—he wouldn't be able to take any of this with him, he suddenly realized. He was still underage; he had the Trace on him. And he didn't exactly like the idea of manually lugging around a giant, heavy trunk. It might make literally running for his life a bit difficult.

Harry ran his hand through his hair. His thoughts were a whirlwind of worry and panic as he stood there, his eyes transfixed once more on the innocent-looking letter on the desk.

Hedwig announced her arrival with a soft hoot as she glided into the room. She must have noticed Harry's distress, for instead of going straight for her water dish next to her cage, she landed carefully on his shoulder. Her amber eyes were wide in what may have been concern, but it was difficult to tell when she was so exceptionally close to his face—not to mention the distraction of the dead rat dangling from her beak. She let out another low hoot from deep in her throat. Harry tried to hide his disgust at the rodent as he transferred her to his forearm.

"That's lovely—listen, Hedwig. I need you to get out of here. It's a bit of an emergency. Go to the Burrow, but, ah, don't go straight there. Fly around a few other places first, in case you're being followed or watched… Can you do that for me?" Her expression of wide-eyed concern immediately became one of reproach. Harry groaned. "Okay, eat that thing first, but be quick about it. This is serious."

Practically huffing, she left his arm to go to rest on her perch in the cage. Harry glanced back down at his trunk and all of its overflowing, messy contents.

 _Right,_ he thought. _So just the essentials, then._

Choosing instead to use a light weight knapsack, Harry packed a change of clothes, a toothbrush and a few other toiletry necessities, the Marauder's Map, and his Invisibility Cloak. His wand, of course, was tucked securely in his back pocket. By the time he was done, he had decided on his course of action. He swung the knapsack over his shoulder with a sense of purpose.

"Go on, then. I'll see you at the Burrow soon," he said to Hedwig, who had finished her food and was now dipping her beak into her water dish. She still did not look pleased at the prospect of flying off again so soon after a long night of hunting, but she gave a resolute hoot at his command. She paused on his shoulder to nip him affectionately on the ear before departing. Harry smiled bitter-sweetly as she left.

He looked once more at the cruel joke of a letter from 'Dumbledore'. Voldemort had really done his homework—the green ink, the thin, slanted cursive, and the careful wording were expertly done, though he would expect nothing less from the Dark Lord. Harry glowered. This was really a low blow, he thought viciously, even for Voldemort. To give him false hope that someone actually gave a damn about him; that the headmaster was really going to show up at his doorstep and take him to the Burrow after such a short time at the Dursley's…

"Nice try," he said out loud to himself in the empty room, and as he said the words, he had a moment of revelation. For the first time in days, he felt… _something_. Since he had returned to Privet Drive this summer, there hadn't been a single moment in which he'd felt anything other than numb.

It had been beyond depression. It was worse, so much worse than last summer, when he'd be up at night crying over the tragic loss of Cedric Diggory, at how it had been his fault, all his fault… nightmares of the graveyard and the ghosts of his parents…

This summer had been drastically different. He'd felt like a marionette puppet whose strings had been cut in the middle of a performance, subsequently becoming a pile of lifeless limbs under the glare of a blinding, bright spotlight. Everyone was watching and waiting for the ‘Chosen One' to get up and act, but he couldn't move, and he didn't even want to, and he didn't even care.

But something about his dream last night… it had sparked something in him. Harry tried again to rekindle the events which had taken place in his vision, and his inability to do so was infuriating. Try as he might, he could only recall a few, fleeting details. The dais, that voice, those red, red eyes…and being …happy. _Wildly_ happy…

 _Because he had me,_ Harry realized. Voldemort had been so very happy to have finally had the Boy Who Lived in his grasp.

Harry smirked as he headed towards the door. _Well, he doesn't have me now,_ he thought as he descended the staircase. He went quietly, avoiding his so-called family, not bothering to wake them up and explain to them that he was leaving. For good.

The air outside was crisp and cool against his face. Harry breathed it in as he admired the blush in the sky, the early sunrise like a pastel painting in various pinks and golds.

_I will come for you._

The words hadn't sounded particularly lethal, Harry thought, pondering that as he heard them echo in his mind once more. They had almost been… kind? As if Voldemort had been making some kind of sympathetic promise as opposed to a sinister threat. Harry laughed out loud as he turned down a deserted back alley. Kind? The Dark Lord? He laughed again, and as he did, he realized that it was the first time he'd laughed in weeks.

 _I should send Voldemort a thank you card,_ Harry thought as he extended his wand arm, signaling for the Knight Bus.

He finally felt alive again.

The violently purple bus appeared from nothingness, racing around a corner and heading towards him. Its wheels screamed in protest as the teetering, towering vehicle stopped just inches from his arm. Harry was still smiling as the door slid open to reveal the familiar face of Stan Shunpike.

"'Lo, sir, how—" He stopped mid-sentence when he looked up at Harry, his eyes widening in shock. "Harry Potter!" he exclaimed, and Harry reflexively ran a hand through his hair in a useless attempt to flatten it over his scar. The smile that he had been sporting instantly became strained.

"Hello, Stan. Good to see you again," he said as Stan reached out to grasp his other hand, shaking it with a bit more gusto than Harry thought necessary.

"Harry Potter!" he repeated, grinning. "What're you doin', hailin' the Knight Bus for? Surely you could get a better ride than this, eh?" He gestured with his thumb up towards the rumbling bus.

Harry managed to pull his hand out of the older boy's enthusiastic grip. He scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Ah, yeah, well. I don't mind taking the bus. Prefer it, actually."

"And they say all celebrities are snobs," Stan said, laughing. He clapped Harry on the shoulder. "Where're you headed?"

"London."

"Diagon Alley?"

Harry nodded, and Stan gave another large, toothy grin. For a long moment he just stared at Harry with that overzealous expression on his face. Harry shifted uncomfortably.

"Er…" Harry glanced up at the bus, its engine roaring behind them.

Stan started. "Yes—right! C'mon then! Up ya go, all aboard—blimey, wait 'till the guys hear about this—"

The last words were muttered under his breath, and Harry was relatively certain he wasn't supposed to have heard them. Choosing to act as though he had not—and wanting to put as much space between himself and the conductor as possible—Harry gave Stan and the driver—Ernie, if he remembered correctly, the old man with the thick glasses and a rather owlish appearance—a quick nod before ascending the stairs to the upper-most level of the bus. Stan looked slightly crestfallen at his decision to not linger near the front by him and chat, but Harry was not in the mood.

The bus was almost empty. Harry let out a long, low sigh, grateful for the lack of people. He settled into a seat next to a window as he swung his bag onto his lap. With a semi-violent lurch that nearly sent him toppling to the floor, the bus began to move, away from Privet Drive, and from the Durley's, and from a horrible, horrible summer.

Once they had started moving, Harry found he was able to lean back in his seat without the fear of being tossed about. Evidently, there were not many wizards or witches who hailed the Knight Bus this early in the morning. Harry pulled his bag tighter to his chest as he went over his grand plan of escape.

He would get himself to Diagon Alley, where he would go the main, public Owlery and send a letter to Ron at the Burrow. It should be more than safe to send a message from there. Or, he thought suddenly as the idea struck him, he could just go straight to the Ministry. Then he could Mr. Weasley in person and accompany him back to the Burrow after he was done working…

The bus came to an unexpected halt, and Harry only barely managed to remain seated by gripping the armrests at the last possible moment. It was a miracle that anyone took this bus at all, he thought as he readjusted himself; it was a rather uncomfortable experience. Yet someone else must have summoned it—when Harry looked out the window, the landscape was clearly not of London, but of another small town.

Harry examined his reflection in the glass as he contemplated, still gripping his seat in anticipation of the hasty departure that the bus would surely make in a moment. His green eyes, so vivid and bright behind his glasses, sometimes jarred even him. It was no wonder that everyone who knew his mother felt the need to inform him that he had her eyes. They were so intense in their hue that they bordered on unnerving.

Something shifted behind him in the reflected surface of the glass, and Harry was hit with a sudden rush of adrenaline. He hadn't heard anyone approach, but there, on the shining, flat windowpane, he saw them as clearly as he had in his dream-the nightmare—

A pair of crimson eyes fixated on him.

Harry stood and turned around so fast that his head spun, whipping out his wand and sending his bag flying to the floor. But there was no one there. Nausea and panic rose in his chest as he tore down the stairs. Maybe he was just paranoid; he had probably just imagined it, but—

Harry froze at the sight before him when he reached the bottom floor. He stood, paralyzed, unable to breathe. It was as if someone had stolen the very air from his lungs.

The driver, Ernie—dead. Unmistakably dead. His body was crumpled in a heap in the floor, his empty eyes staring vacantly from behind the magnifying lenses of his glasses. Stan Shunpike was standing over him with his wand raised high, and the look on his face was blank, completely void of any emotion. He turned towards Harry and pointed his wand at him as though in a trance.

Something finally clicked in Harry's mind, spurring him into action. He quickly aimed his own wand, shouting _"Expelliarmos!"_ at the Imperiused conductor. But Stan deflected the spell, and Harry was just about to fire another curse when a bizarre wave of emotion flowed though him so suddenly and so forcefully that he became light-headed.

_Happiness._

Harry took a step back as the wild joy that was definitely not his own blossomed in his heart, permeating his very soul. Stan was walking towards him, his wand still pointed at Harry's chest, though he didn't move to strike. Harry tried to fire off another curse, but the light-headedness was becoming overwhelming, and the world had begun tilting around him in a strange, unnatural way… For a wild moment, Harry thought that maybe the bus had begun moving again…

He took another wobbly step backwards, and just as he was sure he was about to fall, collided with something very solid behind him. Before he could turn to look, however, a pair of arms wrapped around his waist so tightly that he couldn't move, and that crazed joy was paramount, saturating his mind and eclipsing his own terror at what was happening.

They came in flashes. Recollections of the dream, the nightmare, the vision. Black robes and white skin and red, red eyes; being suspended and unable to move as a thumb ghosting over his lower lip and a hungry gaze seared into him…

The next moment was one that would remain burned in the forefront of Harry's psyche forevermore. This, the last memory he would have of being certain he was cognizant.

Beautiful, conscious clarity.

"I promised I would come for you, my horcrux..."

The whisper in his ear and the laughter that followed it left no doubts as to who it could possibly be. Lord Voldemort’s high-pitched, almost sultry hiss of a voice caused Harry's heart to freeze as the warm breath danced across his ear. Harry opened his mouth, perhaps to scream or maybe to laugh—he was unsure of what exclamation would rip its way out of his throat as his own emotions began to drown in the other wizard's, but he never got the chance to do either. The next word that was tenderly whispered to him, so soothingly it was practically a caress, caused Harry’s body to go limp and his mind to go blank.

"Sleep."

Darkness. Black and heavy and vast.

It swallowed him whole.


	3. Asleep

The darkness slowly gave way to light.

Gradually it came, like a lazy, colorless sunrise. Accompanying it was that familiar ringing sound. It rose from the silence in a similar fashion—a steady crescendo; rising, rising—until two words weaved themselves into that high-pitched note. Soothingly. Softly.

_‘…Precious soul…’_

A feather-like touch danced across his forehead. He hadn’t been aware of his body until that moment, hadn’t felt a thing—but that slight touch acted like a conduit. His heart beat faster, his breath hitched in his throat. It was getting lighter still. The world was righting itself as he teetered along the delicate line that separated consciousness and sleep, and he was on the precipice of waking…

But then the fingers which had been lightly tracing his scar retracted, and an altogether new physical sensation began. He felt it everywhere—tiny, focused pinpricks against his skin, over his entire body. At first they felt uncomfortable, but then he was flooded with a sudden warmth. It was heavy, like being wrapped up in a warm, thick blanket, or some sort of pillow-y cocoon… His eyelids, which had been on the verge of flickering open a moment before, now felt as though they were made of lead. There was no fighting the oppressive sleep, though he did try—and it must had been noticeable, because he could have sworn he heard soft, ethereal laughter as he descended once more into darkness.

_‘…Precious soul…’_

\---

It was like floating in the ocean.

Harry would drift sub-consciously in and out with the tides. Blackness took him out to sea, where he would see nothing and feel even less. Time ceased. His mind was blank. Then, inevitably, he would slowly find himself carried back towards the shore. Closer to the light.

As the brightness—and consequently, his lucidity—heightened, he began to formulate rational thoughts. What happened to him? He remembered… he remembered the letter. Green ink and slanted, thin script. From Dumbledore... No, not from Dumbledore… A trap…

It had been a trap, right?

He recalled getting on the Knight Bus… Stan Shunpike, the driver… Ernie, dead, his huge, wide eyes under those thick lenses, the magnified vision of death—

Harry tried to open his eyes but found that they would not cooperate. They were heavy, so heavy… But even through his closed lids he could sense the growing brightness. Something resembling panic began blooming deep within him.

…Was he dead?

_‘No.’_

The voice was clear in Harry’s mind. He supposed it should have made him jump out of his skin in shock, but it somehow felt bizarrely natural to hear the words in his head.

That was probably the most alarming realization of all.

Harry’s thoughts continued to rearrange themselves into something logical. The moments before darkness, those very recent memories, were clumsily becoming a sequential chain of events…

 _‘I’m… alive?’_ he thought, knowing that he could be heard without speaking.

_‘Yes. I’ve already told you, Harry… Death will never touch you.’_

Lord Voldemort’s words made Harry think of cold glass. Even and smooth on the surface, but sharp and dangerous around the edges. Capable of cutting at any moment. Harry fell silent as the gears in his mind continued to turn ever faster. He tried and failed to open his eyes again.

_‘…Where am I, then?’_

_‘Mentally, you are, for all intents and purposes… asleep.’_

Harry felt a twinge of annoyance at the purposefully incomplete answer. _‘Yeah, okay, but where am I?’_

A pause.

_‘Somewhere where no one will ever find you.’_

Panic truly did grip Harry then. _‘You’ve knocked me out and locked me up somewhere.’_ After a brief moment of silence in which it was obvious that Voldemort had chosen to add no further comment, Harry went on. _‘Why? Why would you want to do that?’_

Voldemort’s tone was sharper now. The pointed edges of those lethal shards. _‘Because you belong to me, and I protect my possessions well.’_

Harry fell silent at the terror that consumed him. The dream, the vision he’d had… That had been a dream, hadn’t it?

Did that really make it any better?

After what felt like a long time—though it was hard to say, because time seemed oddly disjointed in this state of mind—Harry found his voice again. Or his mental voice, at any rate. His body still felt as though it were made of bricks and incapable of movement.

_‘What’s a horcrux?’_

Harry somehow got the impression that Voldemort was considering not responding at all. But instead, almost condescendingly, he said, _‘…Knowing such details hardly matters for you anymore.’_

Harry bit back his initial anger, choosing to voice a different thought.

_‘You said ‘precious soul.’’_

A long, pregnant pause. Harry felt a slight throb of triumph; he was fairly certain that he hadn’t been meant to hear that, and that he had struck upon some solid fact.

But Voldemort’s response was impassive, his emotionless words almost surgical in their precision. _‘A horcrux is a vessel which contains a fragment of another being’s soul.’_

Harry’s mind raced as tried to put together the puzzle which the Dark Lord seemed intent on not giving him all the pieces to. _‘You called me your horcrux. You called me that. Why would you call me that? I’m not a—I don’t have a—I couldn’t—’_

His thoughts trailed off desperately, unable to even put into words such an insane possibility. Yet Voldemort did not offer up any other possible explanation. The silence stretched on and on, seemingly more damning with each passing second.

 _‘No,’_ Harry finally gasped, and though he tried vehemently to make his jaw move, he still could only manage to articulate the thought in his head. _‘No, you’re wrong, I can’t possibly have a fragment of your soul in me. That’s crazy. That’s…impossible.’_

_‘Yes, you do. You have since the moment I first attempted to kill you. You are, essentially, an extension of myself. A bearer of a portion of my soul. My horcrux.’_

_‘But…I…can’t you… Don’t you want it back!?’_

There was another moment of silence which seemed to reverberate with shock. Then, surprisingly, Voldemort’s detached demeanor broke.

He laughed.

Harry was mentally scowling in his frustration. He felt as though he was missing some very critical information. _‘What? Why is this funny, if I have a piece of your soul why don’t you just take it back, get it out of me!_ I _certainly don’t want it—’_

 _‘It is impossible.’_ Voldemort’s voice was suddenly razor-sharp, malicious and lethal. Harry’s heart lurched so violently that it felt as though it had become lodged in his throat. Yet after a tense moment the Dark Lord continued, and it was with a subtle, sarcastic sweetness that he spoke now. As if this were all deeply amusing to him.

 _‘You contain a fragment of my great soul within you, Harry. We are bound now by both soul and blood. As long as you live, I cannot die.’_ This sounded like the most illogical of all prospects to Harry, who had recently listened to a prophecy in its entirety which had said exactly the opposite, but the Dark Lord seemed quite certain.

 _‘So… so you’ve locked me up somewhere…where no one will find me.’_ Harry heard himself as though through a tunnel. Slightly echoing and faint, and even as he spoke, he felt his mind being pulled back into darkness. Out to the vast sea of deeper slumber.

_‘Yes.’_

_‘That’s… No. You can’t…’_

He tried to cling to the light, to continue the conversation, but he was drifting away with the currents of his mind… Everything was getting dimmer by the second…

And yet, simultaneously, he felt his body becoming lighter… It was such a strange phenomenon, to shift from some kind of bizarre, in-between world of cognizance to… something else…

His eyelids fluttered open.

Smoke. Gray at first, hovering in a plume above him, just out of his reach. Harry watched it, fascinated, as it unexpectedly turned bright blue. He smiled. It somehow felt like he’d seen this before; like this little cloud of colored vapor was an old friend.

The blue smoke faded, and just as the wave of disappointment was about to set in, a new one appeared, this time a vivid, hot pink. Yes, this was definitely familiar, a game he had played many times before. Harry reached a hand out towards the pink cloud, suddenly consumed with the realization that he wanted it. He took a shaky step forward, and on some level he realized that his body felt all wrong; awkward and disproportionate and small, but that knowledge was totally eclipsed by the simple driving force of _want_ and _need_. His arm was reaching, reaching, and just as his tiny hand was about to make contact with the pink haze and he was setting his foot down he realized, too late—there was nothing to step onto! He was walking off the edge of vast cliff, and he was about to go tumbling thousands of miles down to the hard ground—

“James!”

A pair of strong, capable hands immediately gripped him under his arms, lifting him up as effortlessly as if he were a baby. Harry looked up at his savior to see, with a tremor of shock, what looked like himself.

“Yes, dear?” The response was deceptively innocent, spoken by a young man with messy, black hair and hazel eyes. He pulled Harry to his chest, and it all dawned on him then.

Was this a memory? A dream?

His father…

“Don’t you ‘yes, dear’, me, I saw that!” A woman stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips and looking mutinous. Her long, red hair was tied back in a braid, and her green eyes were practically shining in their brilliance. Harry couldn’t help but stare at her with awe.

His _mother_.

“Oh, he’s fine, just having a bit of fun is all—”

“A bit of fun!” Lily yelled, and Harry almost felt bad for his father. She was rather intimidating. “I swear to God James, if you don’t stop trying to force some accidental magic out of our son, I’m going to hex you into next week. And don’t even try to deny it!” Harry heard his father draw breath to argue, but she cut him off at once. “I saw exactly what you were doing—putting him on a chair, trying to get him to chase that colored smoke you know he loves so that he falls off the edge—and what, hope that he bounces!?”

“That was nothing!” James shouted. It was the wrong thing to say, as now his mother’s eyes flashed dangerously. He stuttered on, trying to rectify the situation. “R-really! You should have seen the things my dad did to me when I was a kid—purposefully tripping me near the staircase and leaving me close to large, open windows—you just wouldn’t understand, you grew up with a bunch of over-protective muggles—”

“Well, thank God for that! At least he has one responsible parent!” Lily threw her hands up in the air. She was in the living room with them now, and James pulled him closer to his chest. Harry got the distinct impression that he was being used as a human shield; an infant barrier to protect him from Lily’s wrath.

James grinned sheepishly. “He would’ve been fine, Lily, you know I would never let him get hurt! I was in complete control of the situation, I would have caught him. And besides, I’d bet my wand arm that he would have bounced, or maybe even levitated! He’s just brimming with magic, I can feel it. I want to see some of that prophesied power I keep hearing all about!” He extended his arms, tossing Harry lightly up in the air above him as though he were flying. Harry felt an instantaneous giggle burst forth from his lips as his father caught him. This was another familiar game—being thrown up in the air. _Flying_.

Harry passed straight through the dissipating cloud of pink smoke that had nearly been his downfall earlier, and it caused his nose to itch as he breathed it in. He sneezed when his father caught him next.

“And there it is!” James exclaimed in a loud, false bravado as he clumsily wiped Harry’s face with his sleeve. “The power the Dark Lord knows not— _the sniffles!”_

“Enough!” Lily stormed over, and despite the ruthless expression on her face, she pried Harry away from his father’s grasp with exceptional gentleness. “Our son has quite enough people trying to kill him already without adding you to the list.” She pulled Harry to her chest, and the overwhelming sensation of security filled his very being. Nothing felt more peaceful, more natural than being held in his mother’s arms. Harry felt her lips brush against the top of his head, and her chest expanded and she deeply breathed in the scent of him as though she could never get enough.

“Aw, c’mon, Lily—that’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re doing this—to keep him safe…” James rambled apologetically, but Harry was sure that his mum, like him, was hardly paying his father any attention now. The whole world was comprised of their embrace, mother and son, and everything else was just background noise.

“Mmmm,” she hummed in vague affirmation. Her next words were soft and tender, meant for no one else on earth but Harry. If love had a sound, it was this, his mother’s voice. “I’ll always keep you safe, Harry,” she murmured gently.

“My love will always keep you safe.”

* * *

The tide was pushing him towards light again.

The dream—memory?—was rapidly deteriorating… Harry was losing it before it had even completely gone, details blurring and smudging together like some abstracted pastel painting that became less recognizable by the second. The light was pulling him in, and he could tell, now—the difference between feeling his real, physical body and when he was fully dreaming.

His actual body felt heavy and warm. But this time, he was able to open his eyes.

Whiteness. Vast, nearly blinding whiteness everywhere. He thought for a moment that he heard wind—but no; the second he thought that might be what it was he realized that it was whispering —no, no, it was that same, high-pitched ringing—

“Why did you leave your relative’s home?”

Harry pushed himself up into a seated position, blinking in the bright, empty space. He tried to find where the voice came from but couldn’t see anything but white. “Where are you?” he asked. His throat felt raw from disuse.

“Lord Voldemort does not ask questions twice.” A snapping response. There were those sharp edges, again.

“What kind of question is that, why did I leave?” said Harry, frowning. “I wasn’t about to wait around for you to show up, was I?”

Silence. Harry slowly stood, and he became light-headed at the grand achievement of it. His body felt unnatural, almost foreign—he couldn’t help but think of a baby deer taking its first, shaky steps.  

“Where are you?” he asked again, and this time, when he turned to look, there he was—Lord Voldemort in all his deeply imposing, terrifying glory.

Harry barely managed to repress what he was sure would have been a pathetic yelp. He took several rapid and clumsy steps backwards, away from the towering figure of the Dark Lord. How different things felt now as opposed to the last time Voldemort had appeared bodily in his dream… Now, Harry was quite sure he didn’t want to die.

Voldemort stood very still, his blood-red gaze fixated on Harry like a predator who was contemplating how to best go about devouring his prey. Harry shuddered.

“You believed I was going to arrive at your family’s household?” Voldemort asked. He spoke in tones of mild interest, as though he were inquiring about what Harry thought the weather might be tomorrow. “Surely you knew that this was impossible?”

Harry felt very uncomfortable and stupid, but he did his best to not let it show. “Well, yeah, you couldn’t, but obviously you were planning on sending one of your Death Eaters or something, tricking me into thinking that Dumbledore was actually coming…”

Voldemort simply looked at him impassively, his face betraying no emotion whatsoever. Harry waited, but he felt a deep sense of foreboding as the silence stretched on.

“With… with the letter…” he stammered, but still Voldemort said nothing, only continued to stare at him with that impenetrable mask.

“You… that was you, wasn’t it? The letter from Dumbledore…?” Harry’s voice suddenly sounded about three octaves too high. He pictured the tightly furled scroll in his head, and by the intensity of Voldemort’s gaze he could tell, without a doubt, that the Dark Lord could effortlessly see his thoughts…

His mask slipped with the tiniest twitch of his lip. Harry felt the rush of horror before he even said anything.

“It appears Dumbledore has done me a great service. I should send him a letter of my own, expressing my gratitude.”

Harry felt dizzy.

“No…”

He tried to take another step backwards, but his already awkward limbs failed him. Harry fell to his knees, and his hands were trembling as he grasped at his hair, snapping his eyes shut and shaking his head in disbelief.

“No, no, you’re lying...” But he knew it was true. He had unwittingly missed the opportunity to leave with Dumbledore, to go to the Burrow, and had instead walked right into Voldemort’s open arms… such a reckless, stupid, idiotic thing to do…

Harry didn’t know how long he sat there, shaking on the ground as he wallowed in his misery. Voldemort seemed content to simply watch him. The Boy Who Lived, on his knees and trembling before the Dark Lord. Harry felt sick with despair.

“Does… does everyone think I’m dead?” he finally asked in a hollow voice. He kept his eyes closed as he waited on bated breath for the answer.

“What the rest of world thinks or does no longer concerns you.”

Harry’s head snapped up at that. Rage ignited in his chest as his glare fixated on Voldemort, his green eyes burning while the Dark Lord’s crimson ones seemed cold and lifeless in their detachment.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he seethed. “You can’t just leave me locked up somewhere, unconscious! The Order will find me, they’ll—”

Harry was magically lifted from the ground, forcefully wrenched upwards so that he was hovering at eye level with Voldemort, and it felt horribly familiar, the way his arms were bound, stuck down against his sides.

“I can do with you what I please,” the Dark Lord crooned as he took a step closer to his squirming captive. “And trust me, Harry, no one will ever…”

He ran a single finger slowly down his cheek, and Harry’s quivered.

“…Ever…”

Happiness, that crazed, pure joy was clashing and coiling with his own feelings… Voldemort leaned in to whisper the next words in his ear, and Harry couldn’t move away…

“…Find you…”

A thrill of some sick combination of terror and desire tore through Harry’s entire body, and Voldemort laughed at the way he shuddered. His crimson gaze focused sharply on Harry’s lips, much in the same, hungry manner they had the last time Voldemort had him strung up by his magic, and Harry suddenly understood—seeing him, Harry, weak and trapped and terrified—that actually made Voldemort feel… He was…

The Dark Lord was _aroused_ by this.

A realization which, of course, only served to terrify Harry further.

“D-d-don’t—y-you can’t—” he stuttered pathetically. It must have been music to Voldemort’s ears, though, because the undeniable sensation of lust increased ten-fold at the plea. The Dark Lord laughed again.

“I cannot _what?_ ” he said deridingly, his eyes flashing a bright and bloody red. “There is not a single thing that is outside of my possible reach… especially when it comes to you, Harry. Not anymore.”

He ran his long, pale fingers across Harry’s forehead and into his hair, a tender action that would seem loving coming from anyone else. Harry felt a surge of _want_ rising in the pit of his stomach—a want which was certainly not his; it wasn’t, it wasn’t—but the stronger it became, the harder it was to quell up his own feelings of disgust. It would be easier, so much easier, to simply let Voldemort’s emotions overtake his own.

Voldemort grinned—a malicious yet saccharine grin. “Feeling conflicted, Harry?” he asked.

“Th-this is—this is _fucked_ ,” Harry gasped, struggling against the magic constraining him as well as the ability to keep his thoughts straight. He was failing at both. “These are your feelings, n-not mine! You have to stop this!”

“What you are failing to grasp, Harry,” Voldemort said, “is that my feelings _are_ your feelings. Your soul is a part of my soul. You are _mine_ … and I do not need to stop anything.”

He moved closer; dangerously close, staggeringly close. Harry swore he could see himself in the reflection of Voldemort’s eyes.

Wanton desire and fear were coiling in Harry’s chest, threatening to unravel him, and he knew all hope was lost. “Please,” he breathed—a last, desperate attempt.

Voldemort’s eyes widened a fraction. His focus drifted to Harry’s lips and back to his eyes again, and Harry felt a new, unnamable sensation flutter across his mind.

“Say that again,” Voldemort demanded. His voice was soft and low.

Harry wasn’t sure why he listened. “Please,” he begged. Voldemort’s eyes were burning into his, wide with captivation. “Please, I… p-please.”

What was it he was begging for?

Before Harry could attempt to answer that question, the Dark Lord’s lips descended upon his own.

The power of that kiss struck Harry like lightning bearing down from the heavens, setting his world ablaze. He could fight it no longer—Voldemort’s desire overwhelmed him completely, hot and feverish, drenching every fiber of his being. He knew nothing but _want_ as Voldemort’s tongue slid against his own, shockingly warm and sweet; possessive, all-consuming _want_ , and it was glorious, and the boy was _his_ , and he would have him for all eternity, yes, yes, _yes_ —  

Harry was on fire.

But even as his lower lip was being bitten so hard that he feared it would bleed; even as he let a low moan escape from deep in his throat as he kissed back, struggling for some scrap of dominance, things began to darken. The whiteness around them was dimming, and Harry could feel himself drifting back into that sea of deeper slumber…

Voldemort pulled away, and when he laughed, Harry heard it as though from a great distance. He blinked dazedly as he looked up into that penetrating gaze. Voldemort’s eyes were shaded with lust, but there was an undeniable amusement dancing in their depths as well.

The Dark Lord’s features were blurring, his face was fading. “Sweet dreams…” he whispered as he slowly vanished into the darkness. The magic which had been suspending Harry’s body released its hold on him, and he began to fall… Down, down, down…

* * *

Lightning flashed, and Harry opened his eyes to the storm.

Rain was pelting him like tiny daggers against the exposed skin on his face. He squinted, attempting to orient himself—thankfully, the water drops were being repelled from his glasses, making it marginally easier to see through the cyclone—and as he gripped the handle of his broom and turned his attention downwards, he realized where he was.

The Quidditch pitch. He could barely make out the goal posts far below him, but he recognized them without a doubt. There were blurred silhouettes of red and yellow weaving haphazardly around one another as they attempted to discern where the Quaffle was…

And then it clicked. This was the fateful match against Hufflepuff, in his third year, where he nearly fell to his death because…

The moment he thought it, he felt them. Dementors. The icy cold which suddenly gripped him was far worse than the chill of the raging storm. Harry whipped around on his broom to face them, their billowing black cloaks both terrifying and yet somehow beautiful in their ethereal movements. They seemed wholly unaffected by the torrential wind. Hauntingly, they floated towards him with an inhuman grace, the dark fabric which concealed their mysterious forms only slightly shifting as though they existed somewhere outside of this hellacious storm.

In the corner of his mind, Harry saw the dais, and felt the fluttering fabric dancing against his skin...

Sirius was falling through that same veil…

He could hear screaming; his own bloodcurdling shrieks as his Godfather did not simply pass through to the other side, did not get back up and continue to fight with them… Lupin telling him it was too late, he was gone…

The dementors were closing in. There were so many of them, he was going to fall off his broom, to plummet to the earth…

But no, Harry thought, suddenly savage with determination. No, he was not that same thirteen-year-old boy; he was stronger than that now, better—Harry fumbled for his wand in the pocket of his robe —

 _“Expecto Patronum!”_ he yelled, vehemently pointing it in the direction of the dementors. A silvery wisp came forth, and the cloaked figures closest to him momentarily halted, hesitant—but the vapor lasted only a few moments before it flickered, then dissipated completely.

 _Something happy,_ Harry reprimanded himself, _think of something happy…_

But nothing came to him. What was there to be happy about? He had been kidnapped, was being held hostage somewhere by Lord Voldemort because of his own stupidity… He had let everyone down… No one would find him; he was going to be trapped in his nightmares forever… There was no one who could save him now…

_‘My love will always keep you safe.’_

Harry wasn’t sure where the voice came from, but a vision flickered across his mind like a long, lost memory; red hair and a familiar scent… It was a feeling of warmth, of safety… His mother’s words…

 _“Expecto Patronum!”_ he roared again, this time focusing on that vague recollection of what was undeniably love. A rush of relief swept through him as his patronous burst forth. The stag was magnificent; waves of light radiating off it in droves. The dementors fled at once. Harry laughed at their retreating forms, the stag circling him as it cantered about victoriously in midair.

Then he was struck with a sudden idea.

“Sirius!” he shouted as he dove towards the uppermost stands of the pitch. The stag accompanied him, a glowing beacon of hope at his side.

Harry saw him exactly where he thought he would—what he had once thought was the Grim, but now knew was his Godfather, watching him play Quidditch. Joy blossomed in the bottom of his heart, and it was like a fire had ignited. The biting cold of the storm was all but forgotten.

“SIRIUS!” he bellowed again, but the wind stole the cries from his lips and carried them away in the wrong direction. Yet as he got closer, he could see the moment when his Godfather became aware. His giant dog ears perked up, alert, and his head cocked to one side.

And then he ran.

“Wait! Sirius! WAIT!” Harry screamed, but he knew there was no way he could be heard over the storm. His patronous flickered.

Sirius was incredibly fast on four legs. Even on a broomstick, Harry had trouble following him, though that was mostly because the canine was so difficult to see—he was a black form against dark grounds, and the sun, which was covered in thick, gray clouds, shrouded everything in semidarkness. He squinted as he tried desperately to pinpoint him, dread coursing through his veins as he desperately scanned, his eyes darting rapidly over the earth…

The patronous vanished.

No, he had to find him, he had to see his Godfather again—

There. He saw a trace of a black shadow, and it was heading straight for the Whomping Willow.

Harry dove, propelling himself forward on his broom, but Sirius was too quick for him. He dove into the tunnel, agilely dodging the Willow’s violent advances. Harry got as close as he dared on his broom before landing. He tossed it aside and narrowly avoided a thick branch colliding with his face as he ducked, lunging for the entrance. He barely made it. Another swinging branch had followed him from behind, and he felt the reverberations of it as it slammed against the ground above him.

“Sirius!” he shouted again as he crawled along as quickly as he could. It was dark, but he didn’t waste time lighting his wand, instead choosing to feel feverishly with his hands as he fumbled through the tunnel. He pushed through until his fingertips finally scratched against the wooden floor from underneath the Shrieking Shack, and he pressed upwards, the old boards creaking in protest as he shoved them out of the way—

He immediately raised his wand as he pulled himself up onto the floor. _“Lumos!”_

Light flooded the room, but Harry did not find himself in the Shrieking Shack.

He supposed he should not have been surprised. Harry’s nightmares always brought him here, one way or another. But that didn’t stop his heart from beating violently in his chest as he took in the horrible, familiar surroundings.

“Sirius!” he called out as he got to his feet. Hysteria was building in his chest like water rising in a closed space, certain to drown him—but he forced himself to keep a level head. He would find his Godfather; he would talk to Sirius again—

He jumped when he heard the pattering of paws against the floor. Turning on the spot, he saw, for a flickering moment, the giant body of a dog enter through an open doorway.

“WAIT!” Harry took off at once, sprinting—he had to catch him before it closed behind him, he had to or—

But too late. The door slammed shut in his face, and then the many, identical frames began spinning, spinning…

Harry stumbled backwards, holding his breath until they stopped. Which door had Sirius gone through? He had absolutely no way of knowing, now… Heart thundering in his ears, Harry picked a door at random, and hurried through.

Of course it was the Death Chamber.

“Sirius?” Harry called weakly. His frail voice echoing in the vast chamber was the only response.

Tentatively, he approached the stone archway. The veil was flickering about in an almost playful manner. The whispering was soft and soothing.

_‘Harry… Harry… Harry…’_

What would happen if he went through the veil now?

Once more, Harry was drawn in by its invisible, magnetic force. Sirius had gone through the veil… Perhaps it wasn’t death on the other side at all, perhaps it was something else…

Harry stood on the dais facing the archway, just as he had done many times before in his dreams. The fabric danced against his skin and his eyelids fluttered shut. The alluring voices washed over him, like seductive, abstract music…

_‘Harry… Harry…’_

Then the whispers stopped.

The absolute silence was somehow deafening; Harry felt like he’d been caught in a sudden vacuum. His heart froze, and just as he opened his eyes, he felt something grasp painfully at his ankle.

A deathly pale arm had shot out from behind the cloth, gripping viciously at his leg. He screamed as he kicked it off, falling backwards from the dais and scrambling away, his eyes locked on the thing that was crawling out from behind the fabric.

Slowly, moving in a contorted, inhuman way, a body began to emerge, dragging itself out from whatever hell it had come from. Harry’s screams of terror became stuck in his throat as a head revealed itself, someone with long, shaggy black hair…

Its eyes were pure white. The skin on its gaunt face was translucent, waxy, peeling off its skull and rotting away, putrid and decaying. A moan was rumbling from deep in its throat, low and guttural… It was impossible to know if such a creature could see, but those milky white orbs seemed to be staring fixedly at Harry, and his body froze in pure fear.

The corpse of his godfather continued to drag itself out from beyond the veil.

Harry could not will himself to move; he was paralyzed in terror, completely immobile as he remained rooted on the ground, sprawled on his back. Sirius crawled towards him, and the way in which his decaying limbs moved was so abnormal that it made his skin crawl—like every joint was fractured. His elbows bent backwards in the wrong direction, contorting unnaturally; his neck twisted around in a fashion that should never have been possible—his jaw hung open at an awkward angle as he let out another horrible, ragged moan—

“Oh dear.”

Whatever turn Harry had expected this nightmare to take, it was certainly not this.

Luna Lovegood came walking down the steps from the outskirts of the room, perfectly calm and composed. She was wearing all yellow, bright and vivid as sunshine. A giant sunflower was perched behind her ear. Harry gaped at her, bewildered.

“Hello, Harry,” she said conversationally as she approached him. He was about to scream, to warn her, _anything_ —but as he turned to look back at the twisted corpse, he fell speechless. It was gone!

“Did you see someone, too?” Luna came and sat next to him on the ground. She contrasted so greatly against the dim and murky backdrop of the death chamber it was jarring—albeit in a bizarre and pleasant sort of way.

“I think they usually just lurk, right out of sight, you know. But if you spend too much time here, you’ll start seeing things.”

“I…” Harry’s mind was buzzing. Luna was twisting a tendril of long, blonde hair around her finger, looking almost on the verge of boredom. “What… Why are you wearing all yellow?”

Harry wasn’t sure why he asked. Was that really a pertinent question at the moment?

“Am I?” Luna blinked as she looked at him, then down at herself, then back up to Harry. “So I am. Well, that makes sense. Sunshine colors are good luck. I suppose you could use a bit of that.”

Luna smiled and stood up. She extended her arm down to him, offering to help him to his feet as well. Harry didn’t realize until he grasped her hand how badly he was shaking. “Thanks,” he muttered. She didn’t let go of his hand as she pulled him along with her towards the door.

“It’s an interesting place, isn’t it? The Department of Mysteries.” Harry wasn’t sure ‘interesting’ was quite a powerful enough word, but he nodded regardless. He was beyond baffled.

“But… but this is just a dream.” They arrived at the door leading out of the chamber. Harry reached for the handle, pushing it open to reveal the familiar world of white he had been in before.

“Dreams are very influential things, you know,” Luna said chidingly. “Never underestimate the power of dreams. You have a certain amount of control during them, more than you realize. I think they’re more real than anything we experience while we’re awake. Here.” She plucked the sunflower from her hair and placed it gently in Harry’s hand. She took a step backwards, away from him and from the open doorway. “For good luck.”

“You’re not coming?” Harry said, shocked that she would want to stay in the chamber with the ominous stone archway.

“Oh, no. I can’t go with you.” She spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in all the world. Harry’s heart plummeted—being around Luna Lovegood in her vivid, yellow dress had been more uplifting than a patronous. “No, I’m meant to be here tonight. I can tell.” She looked back at the dais knowingly. The white light from the open door behind him was getting brighter by the second.

“But—”

“Go on, Harry. And don’t forget… In your dreams, you have power.”

She smiled. Harry wasn’t sure if he had actually moved to take a backwards step through the door, or if the brightness had simply reached forward and pulled him through on its own. All he knew was that Luna was vanishing from view as the light grew stronger, a diminishing vision of yellow and blonde.

“Good luck,” she called softly, and then she was gone.

* * *

Harry slowly and methodically ran his fingers over the keys. Black and white and perfect. They were smooth as glass, and the silent air was waiting for music.

A single note at first. It carried on in the empty, white world forever.

Then another. And another. And within moments, his fingers were dancing along the keys as if he had known them and their sequential intricacies his entire life. He smirked at the satisfaction of it; all his fear and misery being channeled into the haunting melody that was being born at this very moment. A song the world had never heard before, and, Harry realized suddenly—because it existed only in his nightmares—probably never would.

The melody darkened.

Harry was humming along sub-consciously with the musical notes, maybe even singing wordless, harmonious tunes, but he barely registered it—he was too caught up in the torrential sound of the piano. He felt as though he could play forever.

“…The piano?”

Harry had vaguely noted Voldemort’s presence earlier. He could feel himself being watched, knew that the Dark Lord had begun observing him. But Harry had ignored him, choosing instead to focus on his song.

He was surprised that Voldemort had waited this long to interrupt him, really.

“Yes,” Harry said without looking up. He kept playing.

“Why would you be interested in such a thing?”

Harry barely managed to suppress a grin. He knew Voldemort wouldn’t be able to not ask, and the thought that the Dark Lord should care at all about Harry’s benign interests was deeply satisfying to him.

Because it just confirmed what he already knew.

“When I was little,” he began, still keeping his eyes on the keys beneath his fingers, “I had a great music teacher in grade school. Really nice old man, probably the only teacher I ever had who didn’t just pretend I didn’t exist and who encouraged me to do things. Most teachers didn’t even make eye contact with me… anyway. He played the piano amazingly well. I remember wanting to learn. I wanted it more than anything in my entire life. I asked my aunt and uncle if I could take lessons.” Harry laughed, and surprised even himself at just how cold and mirthless it sounded.

He didn’t bother finishing the story. Voldemort didn’t ask.

Harry continued to play for a while longer. The Dark Lord was standing a few feet in front of him, seemingly intent to just watch and listen, and the longer time went on the broader Harry’s smirk became. The music steadily became livelier, increasingly frenzied.

“Why are you smiling?”

Harry let out a bark of laughter. “Why are you here?” he responded. A rush of agitation rippled through Harry’s mind, and he laughed again knowing that it was Voldemort’s annoyance at his refusal to answer a direct question. “Why are you wasting your time here, with me, in my dreams? If I’m locked up somewhere, unable to be found by _anyone_ , why don’t you just leave me be? Surely you have many more pressing things you could be doing, trying to take over the wizarding world and all. You must be sleeping an _awful_ lot these days in order to be here.”

The last phrase warranted a rather intense rush of rage. Harry bit back more laughter.

“I’ll tell you why,” he went on instead, and he started playing a tune that was playfully light, high and sweet. Harry was smiling cheerfully as, for the first time since he had started playing, he glanced up at Lord Voldemort over the top of the grand piano. The Dark Lord’s intense gaze was fixed hungrily on him, but his face was otherwise a carefully crafted, emotionless mask. He was framed above the bright, yellow sunflower which was resting on the top surface of the piano’s lid. The sight made Harry grin even wider.

“Because you’re obsessed with me, Tom,” Harry said, his lips curling further in amusement as he spoke.

Voldemort’s façade cracked, his pale features contorting in fury, and Harry could feel his onslaught of violent emotions—anger, bitterness, and, ah, there it was— _shame_ … burning shame, because it was so very _true_ …

Harry laughed openly and kept playing, louder and louder, a nearly deafening crescendo as he directed his attention back to the keys. Black and white and perfect. He knew Voldemort was talking; knew he was seething something that was surely dangerous and terrifying—but this was Harry’s dream, and if he didn’t want to hear it, he didn’t have to. He was the one with power here.

Harry smiled devilishly, because he knew that even though he was currently ignoring the Dark Lord’s words, that when he, Harry, spoke… Voldemort would be listening.

“You’re _obsessed_ with me.”


	4. Adrift

Harry was in a coffee shop.

Madam Puddifoot’s coffee shop, to be precise. The beautiful and popular Cho Chang sat next to him. Pink confetti exploded above their heads as a cherub beamed down at them, its chubby cheeks flushed and rosy. Nearby, Roger Davies was snogging his girlfriend with unnecessary vigor, and as Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat, he could think of nowhere else he would rather be less.

Harry grimaced.

Cho smiled.

 _Great,_ he thought as he gave her a forced grin of his own. This was bloody wonderful. The very last thing he wanted to do was relive his ordeal with an emotionally unstable girl. He had rather enough instability to deal with in his current situation, thanks.

Then he felt _his_ presence.

Voldemort hadn’t intruded on Harry’s dreams for some time now. Or, at least, he didn’t think so—it felt like a long time, anyway. Which suited Harry just fine. He’d been using that privacy to focus on the monumental task of waking up.

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

Sometimes, he could tell he was close. When Harry was in that world of white nothingness, he knew he was at least in the vicinity of consciousness. It was like climbing up a tunnel, the light at the end of which meant life, not death. And he would claw and tear his way up it, getting closer every time—

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

But then he’d get too close, become too aware, and that heavy, powerful force would stop him. Gentle and warm. Tenderly, it would pull him back down into slumber—back into his strange, typically unwanted dreams.

Like now.

Harry’s smile became far more genuine at the arrival of Voldemort. Maybe he was wrong; maybe the Dark Lord was spying on him more often than he realized. But now, sitting here with his former crush of yester-year, Harry _felt_ him. In the form or a twinge of annoyance in the back corner of his mind.

Annoyance? It was too much.

“Cho,” Harry said seriously, and her smile faltered at the tension in his voice. The nervousness that had plagued him in reality was entirely absent, now—it was just a dream, after all. Harry took Cho’s hand gently in his own, looking deep into her eyes as he did so. “I apologize for being so forward. But I just have to say it. You’re beautiful, I thought so the moment I first laid eyes on you. Would you mind very terribly if I kissed you?”

She flushed at once. Suddenly, Cho Chang was the awkward one. “I…” she started, then stopped. Cho blushed brighter before letting a breathy, nervous giggle. Then she nodded.

Harry, feeling bold and reckless, didn’t hesitate. He leaned over the tiny coffee table between them and pressed his lips to hers, glad to note that kissing her was a far more pleasant affair when she wasn’t crying.

The twinge of annoyance he’d noted before exploded, transitioning at once into outright rage. Harry barely suppressed the desire to laugh (which was good, he mused, because Cho would probably have been very offended if he were to suddenly burst into laughter mid-kiss).

After a few moments, Harry pulled away. He felt rather smug at the dreamy look in her eyes afterwards. “Cho…” he murmured, his voice husky and low. “I don’t know how else to say this, and don’t be alarmed… but how would you feel if I told you we were being watched?”

Her brows furrowed in confusion, eyes flickering to Davies and his girlfriend at the table next to them.

“No…” Harry said. Then he looked up, addressing the room at large rather than the girl in front of him. “Are you familiar with the phrase…‘Peeping Tom’?” he called out sardonically. Harry turned around in his seat to look over his shoulder, from where he could feel that incensed anger radiating like a furnace.

Lord Voldemort could not possibly have looked more out of place than he did standing there in Madam Puddifoot’s Coffee Shop. A towering, ominously dark figure, quite reminiscent of a vampire in the midst of pink confetti and chubby, squealing cherubs, surrounded by hand-holding couples with the sun shining brightly through the windows at his back. He looked positively _murderous_.

Harry laughed.

Voldemort vanished.

“And good riddance to you,” Harry muttered. He turned to look at Cho again, who, he was surprised to see, looked suddenly pale as a sheet.

 _Oh, right._ He supposed that she would have followed his gaze to the other side of the room, and, therefore, may have noticed the presence of a certain terrifying Dark Lord. Cho looked like she might faint.

“Wh-what was—who was—?”

Harry waved his hand flippantly before taking a sip of his coffee, nearly ingesting some pink confetti as he did. “Don’t worry about him,” he said nonchalantly as he fished the annoying pink flecks from his drink.

“He comes and goes.”

* * *

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

Harry was exerting all his energy into climbing his way up that metaphorical tunnel.

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

He was close, closer than he’d ever been before. He felt the weight of his actual limbs, could swear that he could hear something—wind? No, whispers—no, not that, it was that ringing sound —

For a transient moment, he thought he felt his eyelids flutter. He could have sworn he _saw_. Whiteness. Endless whiteness, so very like his unconscious world. Only real. But ah, there it was—that heavy, gravitational pull. Harry tried again to fight it, but he knew at once that he would fail. He was pried from his mental hold on near-cognizance, pulled back down into slumber.

Into dreams.

* * *

“Harry?”

The music had begun, and Harry was hesitating. Parvati tugged on his arm.

“Come on,” she seethed through clenched teeth, a fake smile plastered on her face as she beamed out at the crowd of students. Harry didn’t have the same gumption. He inwardly groaned as she ushered him forward, and they were soon whirling rather ungracefully and disjointedly on the dance floor alongside the other Champions. Why did his subconscious feel the need to force him to relive all his most awkward moments?

 _Well_ , Harry thought drily, as he did his best to not step on Parvati’s toes, _it could be worse._

Wait. That was a lie.

Within moments, the dance floor was filled. Harry frowned. He didn’t remember that happening so quickly last time. Then again, he had been so focused on not making a fool of himself that perhaps he just hadn’t noticed. But as the song went on and the floor became more and more crowded, he was certain that things were different, now. There hadn’t been nearly this many people before, had there? Harry scanned the crowds anxiously. This song—the introductory, classical instrumental—had been playing for a long time. That was different, too… Before, it had stopped, transitioning to something more upbeat, and he had escaped to find Ron…

Harry’s heart lurched at the thought of seeing his friends. Even if it was only a dream, he desperately wanted to speak with them. Harry continued to search longingly between the many dancers, most of which he didn’t recognize, and _why wasn’t this damn song ending?_

Then he saw him.

He stood out amongst the crowd like an off-key violin note, struck in the middle of the perfect melody to which they all danced. Skin so pale he almost appeared to be glowing, black hair reflecting the lights of the chandelier above, flawlessly coiffed and smooth. Dress robes of deep emerald, the same color of Harry’s own clothing… and he was dancing with somebody, holding someone in his arms… He turned slightly, and Harry could see…

Ginny Weasley.

But not the Ginny from his memory of this day. Not the third-year girl who accompanied Neville Longbottom in a hand-me-down dress and a grimace on her face. No. This Ginny was paler than even the boy who held her, but her skin was dull, holding none of that ethereal, almost otherworldly light which he possessed. She was wearing school robes, not dress robes, and—Harry’s stomach dropped—she was wet, soaking wet, her red hair dark and plastered to her face—just like how he’d found her on the stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets, years go—

Tom Riddle turned her on the spot. Ginny’s head lolled pitifully to one side, sickeningly so. Harry stared, horrified, as the young Dark Lord flipped her tiny body around so that her back was pressed to his chest, and they were both facing him head on now from across the dance floor. Tom Riddle’s arms were wrapped possessively around the child in his arms, dancing with a girl who appeared to be, quite literally, dead on her feet. Her eyes were cold and lifeless. Harry’s heart turned to ice at the sight of her, a trickle of dark blood oozing down her neck, coming from where, Harry couldn’t tell from here…

Then his eyes fixated on Riddle’s. Obsidian black. They reflected the glowing lights from above, sparkling with a dark playfulness. Without ever taking his gaze off Harry, he licked the trail of blood from Ginny’s neck. Harry shuddered as he watched Tom Riddle run his tongue over his own perfectly-shaped, youthful lips, the blood staining them crimson—

Then, quite suddenly, he released his hold on poor Ginny Weasley and let her tumble unceremoniously to the floor. She fell like a rag doll; tiny, fragile limbs crumpling into a lifeless heap.

Several dancing couples whirled past, blocking Harry’s view. He abandoned Parvati at once, scrambling through the crowds, pushing people aside. He vaguely heard his forgotten date’s cry of indignation at his back, could hear people huffing as he shoved past them, but he ignored them all. When he got to where they’d been, the two were gone, simply vanished… No indication whatsoever that there had been a soaking wet, dead girl dropped there just moments ago. And no Tom Riddle.

Harry looked erratically back and forth, his heart beating faster than he’d ever thought possible.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

Hermione emerged from the crowd, her cheeks flushed from dancing and laughing. The ghost of a smile was still on her lips from when she spotted him, but her eyes filled with concern as she noted Harry’s obviously panicked demeanor.

“Hermione,” he gasped, never happier to see her in his life. “Did you see—just now, here, Ginny, she’d fallen—”

Hermione frowned. “No, I haven’t seen Ginny all night… Are you all right, Harry? You look awful.”

Harry shook his head, trying to slow his racing heart. “I… I’m fine,” he said, still scanning the room. “Just, uh, thought I saw Ginny fall and get hurt. Must have seen something else.” Hermione raised a brow skeptically.

“Okay… Do you want to grab a drink with Viktor and I? Where’s Parvati? We could—”

“Hermione, I have a rather strange but very important question for you.” Harry grabbed her by both shoulders. Those dancing around them seemed annoyed that they were in the way, but Harry somehow couldn’t be bothered. “Let’s say, theoretically, that one was induced into a magical coma. Any thoughts on how that individual could potentially go about waking up from that state? With no outside help? Do you think such a thing is possible?”

“What? What in the world are you talking about, Harry?” Hermione’s eyes widened, and she looked deeply disturbed. “Are you _sure_ you’re all right?”

“Yes! I just—” But then, behind her, Harry saw him again. Tom Riddle. He was on the complete opposite side of the Hall, leaning against the entryway so very casually, his penetrating gaze fixed on Harry. His lips curled into a smirk when Harry spotted him. He winked.

“Hold on,” Harry muttered, abruptly pushing past Hermione. She called after him, but he ignored her, once more shoving through couples with no indiscretion whatsoever—until Hagrid lumbered past, at least, dancing with a highly apprehensive looking Professor McGonagall. Harry felt a surge of annoyance as he tried to get around them, because he had a feeling that the moment he looked again—

Sure enough, Tom Riddle had vanished. Harry growled in frustration like a feral animal.

“Such an appetizing sound.”

The light touch on his shoulder made Harry jump so violently he nearly toppled forward. He whipped around, now face to face with the elusive young Dark Lord. Harry scowled. “What are you doing, showing up here? Looking like that?”

Riddle smiled. Harry had never really appreciated just how handsome he was in the memories he’d seen in the diary, but here, in such close proximity, it was almost jarring just how… _pretty_ he was.

Not that now was the time to notice such things.

“It seemed appropriate, given the context.” Riddle gestured towards the Hall around them. “The Yule Ball? Really, Harry?” Then, his voice suddenly far silkier and his smile much more twisted, “… should we _dance_?”

He even made to grasp at his waist, but Harry immediately stepped back, bumping into somebody in the process. “Don’t touch me,” he spat. Riddle’s grin widened.

“Are you sure?” He leaned in close to Harry’s ear, crooning. Harry was finding it difficult to back away any further—who were all these people, really? “Trying to run? But just moments ago, you were so desperate to get to me…”

“Only because it looked like you were dancing with a corpse, and I suppose that concerned me,” Harry muttered, glaring. “But now that I’m over the initial shock, please, by all means, go. No, actually, you stay. Enjoy the Ball.”

Harry turned on the spot and left, shoving past the dancers again, quite used to their annoyed outcries at his rudeness by now. He’d just made it to the staircase when—he wanted to tear his hair out—Riddle was there, waiting, that damned coy smile still on his lips as Harry approached.

“Going to bed so early?” he asked, eyes glittering. “But the party is just getting started.”

Harry swallowed back the urge to scream. He stalked past Riddle and spoke without looking at him as he made his way up the stairs. “Where I’m going is none of your business.”

 _Anger_. It didn’t take much, did it?

Riddle appeared suddenly directly in front of Harry, forcing him to stop, his glower mutinous. “Everything you do is my business, Harry. You are _mine_.”

“So you’ve said,” Harry replied drily. He made to step around him, but the young Dark Lord gripped the front of his robes tightly. Harry flinched, but otherwise didn’t react.

“I have been merciful,” he said, “but I could change my mind at any moment.” Riddle pulled Harry towards him, whispering his next words in Harry’s ear. “I could take you whenever, however I want.”

Those feelings—Voldemort’s feelings—of desire were welling up in his mind again, but Harry forced them away. He also forced away his own panic at that statement, bolstering up some of that Gryffindor courage he was supposed to be so abundant in.

“See, I don’t think so.”

Harry surprised even himself at how light and nonplussed he sounded. Voldemort looked murderous at his lack of fear, but Harry made himself keep talking, because he was fairly certain he was right.

“In the real world, yes, you could do that. You could torture me or rape me or whatever else your twisted mind could come up with. But here? In my dreams? No, I don’t think you can. I have power here, Tom. And if I don’t want you to touch me—” Harry willed his tightly gripped hand away, and, with a bit of effort, Riddle was flung backwards by some unseen force, “—then you won’t.”

Voldemort’s fury was mounting to perilous levels, but Harry felt rather giddy himself. He continued up the stairs.

The Dark Lord vanished and appeared in front of him again, but this time, unflinchingly, Harry kept walking. He held his breath and then— _yes_ —he walked straight through him like he was one of the Hogwarts’ ghosts. The Dark Lord’s rage escalated to epic proportions. Harry let out a bark of laughter.

“Oh, I understand and appreciate the idea behind your little plot. I get the novelty of the whole thing. Knock me out, lock me up in some dungeon or something where no one will ever find me, and then, well, the only one who can ever get to me is you, isn’t it? Because you’re that possessive of things that you think belong to you. The problem is, though, Tom, I’m not a thing.” Harry smirked maliciously. “And I’m getting better at lucid dreaming all the time, it would seem.”

Harry was headed to the seventh floor. Voldemort vanished and reappeared at his side several more times, but Harry didn’t stop, making it to his desired destination. “It was a good idea though. A nice try.” He walked the length of the corridor once, thinking, thinking.

“Stop this at once,” Voldemort hissed in a voice that was clearly used to being obeyed. Harry smiled.

“I need a place where the scary Dark Lord can’t get in,” he said out loud, as he walked back down the hall a second time.

Sure, he didn’t need to be doing this. There was no reason why he had to go to the Room of Requirement to get away from Voldemort—he could just will himself somewhere else. But there was something rather delightful about how enraged Voldemort was becoming at his little act—his dreamy metaphor.

It was almost like having fun.

Harry turned on the spot, repeating the words, ‘I need a place where the scary Dark Lord can’t get in’ in a sing-song voice several more times before the door appeared. He reached for the handle.

 _“I will make your life a living hell, Harry Potter,”_ Voldemort fumed. Harry turned, no longer smiling.

He met the Dark Lord’s glare with one of his own. The Slytherin Heir really was so handsome in his youth, Harry thought again, despite himself. How was it that such a monster could ever have looked so deceptively beautiful? But it was all a lie, all a façade. All just a part of some twisted game that Tom Riddle had been playing from day one.

But Harry could play, too.

“Will you?” Harry asked quietly as he took a step closer to him. Voldemort seemed unsure as to whether he would be able to touch Harry again or not, so rather than immediately act, he only stood there, waiting. But Harry knew it was killing him, not being certain of his ability to hurt, curse, or otherwise maim.

“…No. Not in here. Not in my dreams. If you want to have that power…” Harry leaned forward, and it was he who was whispering in Tom’s ear, this time. “If you _want_ me…” He let his lips graze over the skin of his neck, and Harry felt a surge of victory at the rush of desire— Voldemort’s desire—that blossomed amongst all the anger and rage.

“Then you’ll have to wake me up.”

Harry pulled away just enough so that their faces were less than an inch apart. “Never,” Voldemort whispered, his voice so quiet it could barely be heard.

Harry let his lips brush over those of the youthful Dark Lord’s. It was the softest touch that made that crazed longing sky-rocket, so much so that Harry was almost caught up in it, too—but he just barely kept it contained, and as Voldemort leaned it to claim him in a kiss once more, Harry stepped back, through the open doorway and into the Room of Requirement.

“Goodbye, Tom,” he called. Voldemort’s expression was still one of lust and longing as Harry reached behind him for the handle, and his chiseled, beautiful features had just begun to contort into fury as the door slammed shut in his face.

And that, Harry thought with malicious glee as the lock clicked loudly into place, was the most satisfying sound in the entire world.

* * *

_‘…Harry fucking Potter…’_

The words reverberated throughout his empty, white world. They hung in the air like bait dangling from a fishing hook. His name. Tantalizingly captivating—a shining, glimmering lure. Harry didn’t hesitate.

He bit.

_‘…Harry fucking Potter…’_

A different landscape was forming itself around him. His name was repeating itself in an endless echo, over and over, as though it were being spoken in a vast cave. Each time it was articulated, it got a little louder, a little crisper—his surroundings became clearer, too, until suddenly everything snapped abruptly into place.

“…Never thought I’d say I miss _Harry fucking Potter_.”

Draco Malfoy was leaning over a sink, staring into the steely gaze of his own reflection. His hands were clamped down on either side of the porcelain, holding his slightly shaking forearms steady. Harry stared. Astonished, his eyes darted around the room, and he fell into open-mouthed in shock at where he was.

How had he gotten to Hogwarts? _To Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom?_

“Malfoy!” he shouted in disbelief. But Draco did not seem to hear him.

“Hey!” Harry yelled. Nothing. He went over to where the icy blonde stood, shoving him in the shoulder, only to pass right through him.

Was he in a memory again?

“Why don’t you tell me what it is you have to do? I could maybe help…” Harry looked up as he heard the voice of Myrtle herself. She came hovering out of a bathroom stall, a concerned look on her dismal, transparent face.

“I already told you, Myrtle,” Draco spat. “I can’t tell you, not that, I can’t tell anyone…” His voice cracked at the last word, and Malfoy choked back a sob. Harry was so taken aback by this display of emotion that he temporarily forgot his own peril.

“I know you said that, but… I just wish I could do something. Isn’t there any way I can help?”

Draco shook his head miserably. “Not unless you can get the Headmaster to come back,” he muttered. “Let’s just say that this task I’ve been given is pretty fucking difficult to pull off when he’s not here.” Draco’s arms began shaking more violently. “He’s never fucking here, because Dumbledore, just like the rest of the god damn world, is looking for Harry _fucking_ Potter…”

He fell into silence, and Harry froze, horrorstruck, as the realization dawned on him. This wasn’t a memory. This was the present, this was happening now…

He was having an out of body experience.

“I’m right here!” Harry yelled, though he was relatively certain that this was not true. His mind, or his spirit, or whatever he was, was here, now, at Hogwarts, but it was painfully obvious that his physical form was not. They couldn’t feel him, or see him, or, no matter how loud he yelled, hear him. Though that didn’t stop him from trying.

“I’m here! Draco _fucking_ Malfoy!” Harry screamed as loud as he could.

Nothing.

Draco let out a mirthless laugh. “It’s funny,” he said, though it was clear that his current situation was anything but. “I actually thought life would be easier without Potter around. But everything is so much worse… No one has any fucking idea where he is. He’s got to be dead. How else would he not have been found by now? But no one wants to stop searching for ‘the Chosen One’, precious Harry Potter… Dumbledore is always gone, which puts me in a real shit situation… The Dark Lord has his followers searching for him day and night…” Draco did let out a sob then, and Myrtle put a ghostly hand on his shoulder.

Harry felt it when he’d spoken his name. It was like a pull, some kind of lure, when he’d said it. Was that how he’d gotten here? His name being spoken somehow summoning him?

“My _father_ ,” Draco chocked, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, “h-he’s going to kill him, I-I’m sure of it… He’s been put in charge of finding Potter, to make up for what happened at the Ministry, for needing to be broken out of Azkaban again… He’s going to fail, there’s no way that my father will be able to find him if not even Dumbledore can… H-he’ll be k-killed…” Draco was openly crying now, and Myrtle was too, albeit much more quietly. Harry couldn’t help but be amazed by how much Draco Malfoy was confiding in a dead, muggle-born girl.

“They’ll find him,” she said. “With so many people searching for him, he’s sure to show up…”

“Harry Potter’s dead,” Draco said in a cold, hollow voice, but Harry had felt that magnetic force again at the sound of his name. “He’s dead, I’m sure. His body is probably already rotting away, beyond recognition in a ditch somewhere, and he’ll never be found…”

Harry’s whole world seemed to come to a stop as he became aware of just how dire his situation was. His body was locked up somewhere that not even he, Harry, knew where he was; Voldemort wasn’t even telling his Death Eaters what had happened to him… He was pretending like he, too, was searching for the missing Harry Potter, that the Dark Lord was also hunting the Boy-Who-Lived… He was even going so far as to use the chase as an excuse to punish and, more than likely, kill Lucius Malfoy, who he was still very angry with…

No one had any idea that the Dark Lord already had him. No one at all. Those who were searching for him were surely looking in all the wrong places, and if Draco’s mindset was any parameter for how most of the wizarding world viewed the situation, then they assumed he was dead.

“I’m alive!” Harry roared. “I’m alive! I’m alive!”

 _They have to see me,_ he thought madly as he continued to scream for all he was worth. _They have to see me. They have to hear me, have to know—_

“I’m alive! I’m alive!” Harry thought he was going to burst his with the need to be heard. But Draco just kept crying, Myrtle attempting to comfort him, completely unaware…

“I’m ALIVE!”

Three things happened at once.

Draco let out a particularly loud sob. The mirror in front of him cracked. Harry made eye contact with Myrtle in the reflective glass, and, he could tell by the widening of her eyes, for a fraction of a second she _saw_ him—

“AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEE!”

Myrtle screeched as she whipped around, floating upwards in a frenzy. She twisted and turned, looking frantically about the room—but even as Harry continued to shout at her, she seemed unable to hear or see him anymore.

“AH—Myrtle, what the hell!?” Draco snarled, having jumped quite badly at her outburst.

“I’ve j-just seen a ghost!” she screeched.

Draco looked at her for a moment, dumbfounded. “What… Myrtle, you _are_ a ghost,” he said blankly.

She shook her head. “No—I mean, I meant—I saw him! Harry Potter! Just now, in the mirror!” Her voice was becoming more and more high pitched as she rambled, and Harry was certain, now, that hearing his name had some effect. She pointed vehemently at the mirror, which had cracked down the middle. “I saw him and I swear I heard him screaming! ‘A lie!’, or something! And then the mirror cracked and he was gone!”

Draco stared at the broken, reflective glass. For a moment he simply stood there, his face frozen in shock by Myrtle’s story. Then, as if suddenly coming to a conclusion, he whipped out his wand and began kicking open all of the bathroom stall doors, ready to strike. He passed straight through Harry twice while he was moving around, with no indication that he’d felt him at all.

“You’re going mad, Myrtle,” Draco finally said, looking back to the flustered ghost of a girl. “Potter isn’t here, you were just seeing things because I was talking about him.”

Myrtle shook her head, unconvinced. “But I heard him! And how do you explain the mirror?” She continued to point at it. Draco shrugged.

“I must have done it… I haven’t done any accidental magic in a while, but, well… I must have lost it a bit when… you know.” He seemed unable to voice the words, ‘when I was crying’.

Myrtle narrowed her eyes. “Maybe…” she said uneasily. Harry thought he would explode in his irritation.

“No! I am here! I am alive, damn it!” he yelled. But his words went unheard.

Draco lifted a shaky hand to his forehead, brushing a wayward strand of hair out of his eye. He exhaled a long breath as if to let all the tension out of his body. “Let’s just… let’s not talk about him anymore,” he said morosely.

Harry wanted to bash his blonde head into the sink. He’d only just discovered that hearing his name held some kind of power, and now Malfoy was threatening to never speak of him again! “No, you idiot!” he bellowed, though he didn’t know why he bothered.

Harry began appealing to Myrtle instead—he was, he presumed, closer to what she was in this state. Maybe only ghosts would be able to see him? But no matter how loud Harry shouted, no matter how many times he tried to reach her, she remained completely unfazed.

Harry could feel himself slipping away again. The room around him was blurring, flickering whiteness threatening to pull him back to his previous unconscious state. “Say my name!” he pleaded with his sorry excuse for an audience.

But neither of them heard him. The last thing that Harry saw before he was consumed by whiteness was Draco flourishing his wand at the broken mirror, repairing the crack, and all evidence that Harry Potter had been present in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom was gone.

* * *

Harry’s blank world was rather boring when Voldemort wasn’t around.

The Dark Lord had not reappeared since Harry’s monumental door slamming affair, though that hardly surprised him. Voldemort was making a point, clearly. Attempting to lead Harry to believe that he wasn’t obsessed; that he didn’t want or need to trespass on Harry’s mind and invade his dreams.

Harry smirked. It wouldn’t last long, of that he was certain. But in the meantime, he focused all his energy on that all-important task of becoming conscious.

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

He was so close, now… Wind, definitely wind, he could hear it…and it was so bright, wherever he was, it was very, very bright…

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

_‘… Harry Potter…’_

There it was again! His name. Spoken in a rather more polite tone this time, he noted. Harry snatched at it like a life-line.

_‘…Harry Potter… Harry Potter…’_

That echoing, strange reverberation of his name, as if the words were chasing each other in circles… The landscape shifted, and it was dark, gloomy… Smoky…? Everything came into focus, and Harry found himself, once again, at Hogwarts.

“…I had a dream with Harry Potter in it not too long ago.”

The airy voice of Luna Lovegood had never sounded so sweet. Harry beamed at her before taking in his immediate surroundings—it was the Divination classroom, he recognized at once. And, apparently, they were in the middle of class.

Everyone was either staring at Luna in disbelief or otherwise averting their gazes, obviously very uncomfortable. Trelawney cleared her throat. “Did you now, dear?” she said quietly. The tension in the air was palpable even to Harry, but Luna seemed not to notice.

“Yes,” she replied, nodding. “We were in the Department of Mysteries, in the room with a stone archway. The Death Chamber. We saw it when we were there last year.” Everyone was staring at her now. Trelawney’s jaw was hanging open. “It’s an interesting room,” she added.

“Luna...” Ginny said warningly under her breath, seated on Luna’s left side. She looked on the verge of tears. Harry felt a small twinge of relief upon seeing the youngest Weasley. Good, so she wasn’t dead—but of course she wasn’t dead, that had just been a dream. _This_ was the real world… Right?

“That is… fascinating.” Trelawney forced a taut smile. “Let’s move on, shall we? Who else has had powerful dreams in which we can interpret?”

“But you haven’t interpreted mine yet, professor,” Luna said, looking confused. “I think that when I saw Harry Potter in the Department of Mysteries, it meant that he was alive. He didn’t go through the Veil, after all. He was just in the room with it. He left. I gave him a sunflower before he went. You know, for luck.”

She stared at Trelawney with her wide, eerie blue eyes. Harry inwardly groaned. He could tell by the body language of everyone in the room what they were thinking. She was Loony Lovegood, and this was another one of her far-fetched stories, and no one, not a single person—not even Trelawney—would believe her.

Harry would have begun bashing his head against a wall, if he could actually accomplish such a thing.

When no one else spoke up, Luna kept going. Harry had to give her credit—she was bold. “I think that means he’s still alive, right? What do you think, professor?”

Trelawney cleared her throat again. “I think,” she said slowly, “that we should move on to someone else, Miss Lovegood.”

Luna looked only slightly crestfallen as Trelawney called upon another student. Harry screamed.

“No! Luna, I’m right here! I am alive!”

Nothing.

“You old cow,” Harry muttered, glaring at Trelawney for all he was worth. He spent the next few minutes screaming and shouting, attempting to get someone’s, anyone’s attention, but not a single person noticed him.

The whiteness returned, and he was lost to it.

* * *

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

Still no Voldemort.

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

White, blindingly bright…the sound of wind…

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

_‘…Harry Potter…’_

It was a whisper, this time. The way the words tangled around each other sounded more like a ghost than anything else. But it was just as tangible as the ones before when he grabbed at it, and Harry was whisked away from his blank world at once.

_‘…Harry Potter…’_

For a moment, Harry thought that this was it. He might be truly going crazy.

He was back in the Divination classroom, only this time, it was nearly empty. And dark. The night sky was visible through the tower’s windows, stars as tiny pinpricks of light and full, swollen moon. The room was filled with dozens of floating, lit candles, and some strange smelling herbs were burning in the corner, saturating the space with even more smoke than usual. Harry was certain that if he could actually breathe in the air, he would be coughing.

But it didn’t seem to bother Trelawney, who sat alone at a table in the center of the room. She was wrapped in her usual eclectic shawls, waving her hands theatrically over a crystal ball which she had placed before her. Her eyes were huge, wide and magnified behind her spectacles as she stared into the shiny orb.

“…Harry Potter…” she whispered.

_Ha!_

Harry laughed out loud at the sight. So maybe the crazy old bat _did_ believe Luna Lovegood. Enough to try her hand at looking for Harry Potter in a crystal ball, at least. “Do you see me?” he said loudly, standing not one foot away from her. He could see his own distorted reflection in the sphere’s glossy surface… Though it quickly became clear that the Divination Professor could not.

Harry let out a roar of frustration. “I’m right here! I’m right in front of your _fucking_ face! You’re a Seer, aren’t you!?” he bellowed. “So SEE!”

He made to slap her face, fully expecting to pass right through her.

“AH!”

Trelawney fell out of her chair.

Harry gaped. He had _touched_ her… He scrambled over to where she lay, sprawled out on the floor. The strange woman looked like some bizarre, otherworldly creature, the candle lights reflected in her thick glasses and her beaded shawls spread out like wings around her. She was looking around the room in confusion as she sat up, but she _still_ didn’t see him—

Harry reached forward (much less aggressively this time) and tried to touch her shoulder. He could feel her… But it wasn’t a _normal_ touch; it was like there was something strange inside of her body, pulling him towards it…

There was something very different about Sybill Trelawney.

Feeling he had nothing to lose, Harry let the odd, magnetic force pull him towards her. One moment, he had both hands on either one of her shoulders, and the next, he was being sucked in like a breath of air.

The world seemed to collapse in on itself. Harry’s perspective suddenly shifted, skewed—

Then he was coughing.

Ragged, painful coughs as his propped elbow buckled beneath him, landing him flat on his back on the floor. The smoke was so thick in the air… Harry rolled to his side, and upon seeing the hand in front of him… Well, he would have screamed if he hadn’t been coughing. It was definitely _not_ his arm. It was thinner, veiny and half covered in a beaded fabric… That was when it dawned on him.

He was _inside of Professor Trelawney’s body._

Never had Harry had a more disturbing thought in his entire life. And, considering all that had happened to him recently, he knew that was rather significant.

Harry pushed himself to his feet—her feet?—only to discover that every movement he made was excruciatingly painful. He steadied himself on the chair that she’d been sitting on, nearly tripping over her superfluous robes. He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself and found that even breathing was painful. His throat was raw, dry, inflamed—but he had a body. _He had a body_ , and he was here, _at Hogwarts…_

He had to find Dumbledore.

Yet would Dumbledore even be here? Draco had said that he was often gone from the school… But he had to look, he had to try… If not Dumbledore, he could go to McGonagall, she was also an Order member…

Harry took a shaky step forward. It was excruciatingly agonizing, possessing someone else’s body. Every movement felt like needles jabbing at his nerve endings; sharp, searing pain shooting up and down his limbs. But Harry forced himself to move through the pain, stumbling down the ladder. He cursed Trelawney’s insistence on existing so far away from every other living soul in the castle.

It felt like it took years to finally make it to the hall which led to the Headmaster’s office. Harry wasn’t sure how long he would make it. Each breath was like fire in his chest, increasingly worse with each inhale. And, he noticed, there was another force that seemed to be clawing at him from the inside…

He had a horrible feeling that it was his dear Professor. Harry was possessing her body, but she was still in here too, and there just wasn’t enough _room_ for the two of them—her spirit was fighting for control again, tearing at his own—

 _This bitch,_ Harry thought savagely as he forced her body to cooperate. He focused intensely, one step, then another, then another—it felt like walking on razor blades and he staggered on, fumbling through the dark, finally making it to the second floor… down Gargoyle Corridor…

The hallways were completely deserted, which Harry expected, as it was obviously very late. He was therefore shocked when, as he turned the corner to where he knew the entrance to the Headmaster’s office was, he collided with another person.

Harry stumbled backwards, pain shooting up his spine like electricity, and he was sure for a moment that his legs would fail him and he would fall—but a strong arm caught him, wrapping around his borrowed body’s waist. Harry clawed at the unknown entity’s chest, and peered up through Trelawney’s thick glasses, squinting in the dark—

 _“Lumos,”_ muttered a low, horribly familiar voice. Light erupted from the wand in his other hand.

_Snape._

Without a doubt, Severus Snape was not Harry’s first choice. Sure, Dumbledore trusted him. Sure, he said he was one of the Order members. But Harry wasn’t certain, and he didn’t really want to take any chances given his current predicament. He wanted to speak with Dumbledore, not Snape, and if he was coming from the Headmaster’s office, then the Headmaster must be in there… He was so close…

Harry tried feebly to push past him, but Snape’s grip tightened. The searing pain in Harry’s borrowed body escalated, and he knew that there was no hope for it. He would never be able to withstand the agony long enough to pull himself away from Severus and make it up the stairs, to Dumbledore’s office…

“Sybill?” Snape said in an uncharacteristically concerned tone. He looked alarmed at the sight of the stumbling Divination Professor. “What’s happened?”

 _Well, beggars can’t be choosers,_ Harry thought miserably, and he was certainly past the point of begging. It was either Snape or no one. He clutched at the older wizard’s chest as if he were clinging to dear life, looking pleadingly into his dark and calculating eyes.

There was something in that gaze that Harry thought might be recognition. They widened in shock, as though he had been able to see right through her… Could it be possible? Was there some way that he could tell that it was Harry inside of Trelawney’s body? Or, at the very least, that it wasn’t her?

“Speak,” he said at once.

Harry drew in a ragged, searing breath. When he spoke, it was not with Trelawney’s usual, dreamy voice, but something guttural, deep and rough. “…Harry Potter…” he choked out, and while he would have preferred to speak in normal, full sentences, he knew that it was impossible —each syllable was like fire on his tongue, and Trelawney’s force thrashing against his own was tearing at him, ripping him apart from the inside, forcing him away—but he wouldn’t relinquish his hold on her, not until he’d had his say—

“…Alive… The Dark Lord has him… Locked away, secret, safe…” Snape’s expression was a stone mask, completely unmoving as he stared deeply into his eyes. It was, perhaps, the only time that Harry had looked at his Potions professor and not been met with a contemptuous glare.

Harry drew in another agonizing breath, refusing to be forced out, not yet, just a few more words… “In an unknown place, a world of white, he sleeps…”

Another breath in, and it was like razor blades being dragged down the inside of his throat—this was it, he couldn’t bear it a moment longer—but he needed to say it—

“…Harry Potter…human…horcrux…”

Harry just registered the flicker of horror on Snape’s face before he was finally flung from Trelawney’s body, ripped away in the most painful fashion imaginable—no Cruciatus curse could ever, ever feel so horrible—it was the Ministry all over again, when a snake had spoken with his jaw and he had begged for death—

And then he felt that, too; the twisted serpent in his mind… His body—but was it really his body? It felt like it now, and as he blinked his watery eyes open he could see that he was back in that familiar space of white nothingness. He was on fire, his scar burning as though a white-hot iron had been pressed upon it… Harry felt arms wrapping possessively around his waist from behind, nails digging into his chest so tightly he knew there would be blood… He could feel a crazed fury like a raging storm in the back of his mind, wild and untamable… Lips were pressed against his ear, and the hiss that passed through them was shockingly soft, light—but the words were laced with venom.

Voldemort’s words.

“…Where _have_ you been, Harry?”


	5. Awake

_"…Where have you been, Harry?"_

The nails which had been piercing like talons into his chest withdrew as Harry was flipped around, now frighteningly close and face to face with his captor. Black robes and white skin and red, red eyes. The pain was unbearable; Harry’s scar burned with more ferocity than ever before. He would have been writhing on the floor in his agony if he weren't suddenly being magically suspended in the air. It was all he could to stop himself from screaming as Voldemort loomed over him.

"I did tell you that Lord Voldemort does not ask questions twice." Those words like broken glass as spidery fingers found their way into his hair, yanking his head back to better see his face. Voldemort leaned in to him, and for a wild moment Harry thought he was going to kiss him—but then those scarlet eyes fixated on his own. Piercing, penetrating.

_‘…Harry… Harry… Harry…’_

Harry’s memories were a tightly coiled knot, and the Dark Lord grabbed ahold of one end of the string —

"…Oh dear." A girl's voice—

—and pulled—

"…if you spend too much time here, you'll start seeing things."  

—and pulled—

The color yellow, bright as sunshine—

—and pulled…

The visions flashed in Harry's mind chaotically as he tried to fend Voldemort off, resulting in a mental war that was something like the changing of television channels back and forth, rapid-fire, one image, then another, then back again—

.

…He is in front of the stone dais. The veil is fluttering in the non-existent breeze, grazing his skin… He is numb, completely numb, and ready to face death without a trace of fear—

—blood curdling screams are ripping their way up his throat as he scrambles away in hysteria from Sirius's mangled, rotting corpse, the decaying body of his Godfather dragging itself towards him—

"…strike down your mortal enemy in his dream." His casual, demeanor—

Sighing—

Screaming—

Moaning as the Dark Lord’s lips claim his own, and their tongues are moving together, and he is on fire—

"Potter is dead."

A cold, sneering voice. The words of a panicked boy and crying, emotional sobs that shake the air—

"…saw Harry Potter in a dream…" A girl, now, her tone politely curious.

"…think that means he's still alive…"

"—dead—Potter is _dead_ —"

"—do you think, Professor?"

A mirror cracks in half and a ghost is screaming—

Harry is screaming—

"I'm alive! I'm alive! I'm alive! I'm—"

"Dead. He's got to be…"

_"—alive!"_

His hands are dancing across piano keys, the most passionate melody mingling with the echoes of that poor boy's weeping—

A golden girl is pressing a sunflower into his sweaty, shaking palm—

"—the Dark Lord has his followers looking for him day and night—"

"—you're _obsessed_ with me, Tom—"

That same sunflower is resting on top of the piano, a vivid yellow that shines like a beacon in his world consisting of only the keys beneath his fingers, black and white and perfect—the music is light and sweet and the crying is getting louder—

"…H-he'll kill him…"

It's hypnotizing, his piano song—

"— _obsessed_ with me—"

It is day, and the Divination classroom is filled with staring and uncomfortable students.

"…Harry Potter…"

It is night, and the Divination classroom is filled with floating candles and tendrils of smoke.

"…Harry Potter…"

The halls are dark, illuminated only by the light of a swollen moon streaming through the high, small windows—some glittering, inhuman creature is walking down the corridor in the most disjointed way, head rolling back and inhaling ragged, heavy breaths—

.

 _No,_ Harry thought, horrified as their mental battle raged on. _No, not this, not this, you can't, I won't let you see…_ He tried with all his might to push Voldemort from his mind, but it worked against him, for he suddenly felt the Dark Lord seize on that particular vision with a scorching viciousness—Harry was in so much pain, he couldn't focus, he couldn't stop him—

.

The woman is like a corpse, the way she moves—she rounds a corner and collides with a tall, dark figure—

.

_No—_

.

"Lumos."

.

_No—_

.

Snape's face comes into view, sallow features lit up by wandlight—

.

_No—_

.

"…Alive…" Her voice is guttural- raw, low, inhuman—

.

Harry desperately tried again to force the memory away—Voldemort's focus felt like talons digging into his very soul—

.

"…locked away, secret, safe…"

"Harry Potter is dead-"

"—world of white, he sleeps…"

Draco is crying and the piano song is still cutting across his mind—

"…Harry Potter…." She is staring up at Snape pleadingly, beseeching him to understand—

.

 _No!_ Harry thought savagely, and he refused to let Voldemort hear anymore—the memory flickered, half in focus as it became blurred by some other, unbidden thought from Harry’s mind.

.

A red haired woman is holding him in her arms, breathing in his scent—

"…Human…" Trelawney's coarse voice and Snape's widening eyes, but Harry wouldn't, couldn't allow it—

"…My love will always keep you safe…"

A soft, gentle tone—a feeling of overwhelming security—

 _Love_ —

.

Suddenly it was Voldemort who was screaming. All the agony which Harry had been plagued with was gone, instantly vanished as though someone had flipped a switch… And he could tell, by the grotesque way in which the Dark Lord was howling, that he could feel it, that it was now Voldemort's pain.

Harry saw flashes of someone else's life.

.

"Freak!"

A tiny, dark-haired orphan boy is in fetal position on the floor, crying.

.

_No—_

This time, it was _Voldemort_ voicing his refusal; the Dark Lord was the one trying and failing to hide his memories which now played like a projection, plain as day for Harry to observe.

.

That same child years later, in second hand robes in the Great Hall of Hogwarts…the Sorting Hat shouting 'Slytherin!' to scant applause as he sits at the far end of the table, alone… He hears muttering, the word 'mudblood' being spat at him, and he doesn't understand, but it sounds just like 'freak'…

.

_No—_

.

…A middle-aged man and his elderly parents sit down to dinner in their lovely manor, and a handsome, teenage boy bursts in with a wand raised high, murder evident in his every movement. He locks eyes with the man who looks so very much like him and for a second there is something there—the boy's hand twitches in a moment of hesitation—

.

_No—_

.

But then they are dead in a lightning flash of green… Tom Riddle is shaking, shaking… He lets out a strangled, choked sob that is nothing like any sound Lord Voldemort has ever made—

.

_No!_

.

Harry was violently flung from the Dark Lord’s mind. He stumbled and fell to the floor, gasping for breath, lightheaded and dizzy. He blinked in the sudden whiteness of his blank world. Instinctively, he put his arms up in front of his face, bracing himself for the backlash, for pain, for some horrible, horrible punishment… but his fear was unnecessary. Harry looked all around him, chest heaving with his frantic, labored breathing. After a long moment, he finally lowered his shaking hands.

Voldemort was gone.

* * *

It was like floating in the ocean.

No; it _was_ floating in the ocean. Harry laid on his back with eyes closed, the soft surface beneath him rocking gently back and forth, back and forth…

He ran his fingers over the fabric. It was extremely soft and comforting. Harry opened his eyes as he propped himself up on his elbows.

His bed.

Harry couldn't suppress the silly grin that surfaced. It was his four-post bed from Hogwarts. He was laying on the soft, cushy mattress nestled in its large wooden frame—floating, evidently, in the middle of the ocean.

Perhaps the situation should have alarmed him, being stranded like this (for he saw no sign of land whatsoever), but he found it was rather difficult to feel panicked. Maybe he had simply exhausted his ability to be afraid anymore. He shrugged before laying back down on his back and looking up into the sky, his head resting comfortably on his fluffy, white pillow.

It was night. There were countless stars, more than Harry had ever seen even while studying Astronomy on the tallest tower at Hogwarts. The moon was absent tonight, so the twinkling dots had the entire stage to themselves. They glittered and shone, intensely bright. Harry called them out by name as if they were old friends: Orion. Alphard. Regulus.

Sirius.

He sighed as he rested his folded hands on his chest. His breathing was deep and slow, in perfect rhythm with the rolling waves of the ocean below. For once, his mind was at peace. There was no panic here. No fear. No wars or wizards or prophecies unfulfilled. He thought of nothing but the stars in the heavens and the rocking of the soothing, calm waves, back and forth, back and forth… and he smiled.

Harry Potter, lost at sea.

* * *

_'…Harry James Potter…'_

This time, Harry hesitated.

He knew that voice. High-pitched, mirthless. Cold.

Voldemort hadn't haunted Harry's dreams since he'd accidentally seen the memories of Tom Riddle. The visions of the young, dark wizard displaying real emotion—one that wasn’t rage, at any rate—would be burned in Harry's mind forever. At one point, Lord Voldemort had just been a poor, lonely orphan… He'd been so small, bullied even… Called a 'freak' and left crying on the floor…

Harry knew all too well what that was like. Was he feeling… sympathetic? For the mass-murdering dark wizard whose name the world feared to even say out loud, who had done such unspeakable horrors? Harry’s stomach twisted into knots at the thought.

His mind was a jumbled mess. He really hadn't meant to delve into Voldemort's memories; wouldn't have even thought he was capable of such a thing… But he had. And Harry had an ominous feeling that the repercussions would be dire.

Yet thus far, nothing. So, when his name dangled in the air in that odd, echoing resonance in the voice of Lord Voldemort… Well.

Harry hesitated.

_'…Harry James Potter…'_

…But…only for a moment. Throwing all caution to the wind, Harry once more latched on to the sound of his name.

_'…Harry James Potter…'_

The scene around him was rapidly constructing itself, the eerie sound of his name repeating, reverberating, wrapping round his head like a coiling snake… Then, all at once, everything abruptly came into focus.

"…From this day forward, there shall be a Taboo on the name of Harry James Potter, and every shortened variation of the name."

Harry quickly took in his new surroundings. He found himself in a large, ornate room. A kind of dining hall. Flames crackled softly from a fireplace at the far end, bathing the room in an eerie glow. Over a dozen people sat around a long table in the center, dark robes and pale faces half-lit in the dim light. A meeting. Harry's eyes darted over them—Death Eaters, all of them; he spotted Bellatrix at once, and Snape, and was that Draco Malfoy? And there, right in the center…

Lord Voldemort was leaning back languidly in his seat. His spidery hands were folded in front of him, starkly white against his black robes. The hood of his cloak was pulled over his head, casting his sinister facial features in shadow. But his scarlet eyes peered out from the darkness like embers. Clearly visible, vibrant as fresh blood.

"A Taboo, my Lord?" asked a blonde man across the table from Voldemort.

The Dark Lord's face was difficult to see under his hood, but even Harry could feel the irritation emanating from him at being questioned. The man who asked must have felt it, too; he physically flinched as those crimson eyes fixated on him.

"Yes, Yaxley…" Voldemort said softly. "A Taboo. From this day forward, Harry Potter is to be referred to only as Undesirable Number One. Anyone foolish enough to say his full name shall be taken into custody. Punishments will be severe. See to it that Thicknesse puts this into effect. Immediately."

Several people around the table looked perplexed, but no one else was stupid enough to question their Lord's command. Yaxley nodded anxiously. "O-of course, My Lord. I shall see to it at the Ministry first thing."

There was a tense moment where Voldemort stared at him with piercing eyes that seemed to flash in agitation. Yaxley looked both confused and frightened.

"…Immediately," he hissed softly.

Yaxley, finally understanding that he was being dismissed to carry out this task right at that very moment, jumped to his feet. "Yes, of course, my apologies, my Lord…" he muttered. He gave a slightly flustered bow before hurriedly leaving the room. The door shut behind him with a soft click.

Harry felt dread like a crushing weight on his soul.

"No…" he gasped as his mind struggled to fully process what Voldemort had just done. He had ordered a 'taboo' on his name, so no one would ever say it again… No, he couldn't do that, couldn't just wipe his name away from existence; it was the only reason he'd been able to leave his body, his only way of possibly reaching anyone…

"How poetic," Voldemort said once Yaxley had gone. "To think, it has been my name which all wizards and witches have grown to fear; my name which no one dares to speak… and yet the same shall also be true of the supposed 'Chosen One'…" His fiery gaze swept down the table, settling on another blonde at the far end.

"How goes the hunt for the infamous Undesirable, Lucius?" he asked lightly.

Lucius Malfoy did not look good.

He was exceptionally pale, with dark, violet rings under his eyes. His long, light hair hung lank and lifeless around his face—the telltale signs of someone who has not slept in a very long time. When the Dark Lord addressed him, he jumped in his seat like he'd been shocked with an electric current.

He opened and closed his mouth twice, seemingly unable to force his jaw to cooperate. "Th-there has been no progress, I am deeply regrettable to report," he finally managed to stutter. "There is no trace of him whatsoever, it is as if he has simply vanished…" The older Malfoy's voice became quieter and quieter as he spoke, the last word nearly a whisper.

Voldemort simply looked at him, unblinkingly. Lucius was incapable of making eye contact at all.

"…Simply vanished…" the Dark Lord repeated, his cold voice settling across the room like an icy frost. Everyone averted their gazes, shifting uneasily in their seats. It was such a convincing charade that Harry almost believed it himself.

Lucius seemed as though he was bordering on hysteria. His gray eyes were wide in fear as he looked up, desperate. "There is nothing!" he spluttered, his voice cracking. "No traces anywhere! Not even Dumbledore had—"

Several people made angry hissing noises at the name, and Bellatrix actually snarled. Lucius fell silent at once.

But Voldemort smirked, his long, pale fingers now drumming almost playfully against the wooden armrest of his chair. "Yes…" he said quietly, and the attention of everyone in the room returned to their master. "Not even _Dumbledore_ was able to find him…and now, thanks to Severus, he never shall…"

Several people muttered words of praise. One man—a Death Eater that Harry recognized from the Ministry, Dolohov—raised his half-full wine glass.

"To Severus Snape," he said boldly, "for ridding the world of Albus Dumbledore, once and for all. Here, here!"

Snape, who was seated at Voldemort's right-hand side, inclined his head in Dolohov's direction, an impassive expression on his pallid, sallow face. Nearly all the other Death Eaters around the table raised their glasses as well, the words 'Here, here!' being repeated jubilantly.

Every Death Eater except Bellatrix. Voldemort, who no one seemed to expect to toast anyone else, ever, had amusement sparkling in his eyes. Bellatrix was biting her bottom lip in obvious confliction. Everyone watched her, glasses held high, waiting. Then, looking as though she was regretting it even as it was happening, she lifted her glass. Snape raised his eyebrows in surprise as she looked his way.

"Here, here," she said evenly. Snape smirked as she, along with everyone else, drained their glasses.

"Even Bellatrix toasts me," Snape drawled after they had finished drinking, the sounds of glasses touching back down to the table clinking all around them. "I am truly honored."

Bellatrix pursed her lips. She looked like every word she said caused her physical pain as she spoke through a forced, taut smile. "It would seem, I have… underestimated you, Severus," she said slowly. "What you have accomplished is truly admirable. You have my deepest… respect."

Snape was smiling like a child who'd been given an early Christmas present, though it was clearly her discomfort, not her praise, which he relished. "I thank you, Bellatrix… though I must give credit to your nephew, as well. It is only because of what Draco managed to accomplish that the Headmaster was in a weakened state, unarmed." Snape turned to look at the opposite end of the table from where Lucius had been, inclining his head to Draco.

The younger Malfoy did not look much better than his father. He swallowed nervously as he nodded back towards Snape, acknowledging the praise, but apparently unable to speak.

Bellatrix said something after this, but Harry did not hear it, as his ears seemed suddenly incapable of functioning properly. It felt like someone had scooped out his insides and replaced them with solid ice. He looked back to stare into the sallow face of Severus Snape, frozen as the truth repeated itself like a sick, horrible mantra in his mind.

_Snape killed Dumbledore._

_Snape killed Dumbledore._

_Snape killed Dumbledore._

Snape killed Dumbledore, and Harry had just tried so desperately to reach out to him, but he was a traitor all along, and he killed Dumbledore, and Draco— _Draco Malfoy had helped_ —

Never before had Harry ever truly wanted to kill.

He'd been viciously angry before, of course; and he thought he'd been murderous after Bellatrix killed his Godfather in the Department of Mysteries, but now, now he knew—what he had felt then was a mere shadow of the fury he felt now. Snape killed Dumbledore, and Harry would kill him, _he would kill them all—_

He didn't even realize when he started screaming, he just was. Horrid, rage-filled cries that clawed their way out of the pit of his stomach like angry, rabid monsters. Even though he knew he was little more than a ghost, Harry found it incomprehensible that they could not hear him.

But then, it seemed, someone— _something_ —did.

Harry hadn't even noticed the snake coiled up on a hearth near the fire. The giant serpent had been sleeping, completely still throughout the meeting… yet she raised her head now and, Harry was certain, she was staring right at him as she began to slither closer…

Maybe animals were just more perceptive? Harry had no idea, but as Voldemort's pet raised her ugly head towards him, curious, he reached for her. He had seen from her point of view in a dream once before, after all; perhaps he could control her body in the same way that he had controlled Trelawney's? He could deal with the pain now, the rage that burned within him made him powerful, invincible—

Harry reached for her, unflinchingly.

It was easy.

Possessing Nagini was nothing at all like possessing Sybill Trelawney. For a phantom of a moment he thought it would be—he prepared himself for the searing, terrible agony—but then it was as if a part of his mind simply clicked with hers, two pieces of a puzzle fitting seamlessly together, and no pain came.

Although she did not exactly… _consent_ to him taking the control of her body. Nagini fought him, furious as he demanded her submission. But Harry was a force of raw power, manic rage, and the struggle she put up against him was almost pitiful. He pushed her influence aside as though she were merely a disgruntled child.

Harry saw through serpentine eyes; he twitched the reptilian body experimentally. It was powerful, muscular and smooth. He wasn't sure if it was simply Nagini's vision or his own, personal rage, but he literally saw red as he turned to look up towards Severus Snape. The world was seen through a lens of crimson.

"…Perhaps I should have Severus take over the task of finding the Undesirable, as he seems to be one of the only capable beings amongst you."

Harry lost it. At those words, his unbidden shriek of rage came forth as a guttural hiss from deep within his serpent's throat. His long body coiled dangerously in an instant, poised, ready—there was only a fraction of a second where he saw the panic flicker in his former professor's eyes, and all those sitting at the table turned as they heard the feral spitting sound—

He struck.

Snape barely had time to blink before razor sharp teeth were piercing into his flesh. Harry just missed his throat, which he had been hoping to rip apart at first bite, death in an instant—but as he felt the cracking of bones in his shoulder and the sensation of hot, metallic blood in his mouth, he thought, crazed and feverish, that this was much better—poisonous venom was flooding through his fangs, injected into the man's breaking body… Snape was screaming like the pathetic creature he was, and Harry delighted in the fact that he would suffer, that he would not die quickly…

He barely noticed the screaming of the others; he hardly registered the chaos that had erupted in the room around him—but now he could smell something; a pungent, powerful aroma, and Harry somehow knew it was their fear…

As much as the lizard part of his brain wanted to continue with his current prey, to bite and rip and _tear_ , he released his deathly grip from Snape's shoulder and redirected his focus. He would kill them all, every last one—

 _"Nagini!"_ Voldemort's hissing in confusion would have made Harry laugh if he weren't so filled with bloodlust. The Dark Lord's scarlet eyes looked rather less intimidating when the entire world was coated in that same, crimson hue. Harry looked at him and, if snakes were capable of smiling, he surely would be.

 _"…Wrong…"_ he hissed mirthlessly.

Harry would have liked nothing more than to watch as the realization dawned in the Dark Lord’s widened gaze, would have liked nothing more than to see Voldemort come to terms with the fact that his precious pet was being controlled by Harry James Potter—but he didn't. There were so many Death Eaters, so little time…

Draco Malfoy was next.

He lunged with lightning speed at his blonde peer who had, apparently, aided in the murder of the Headmaster. Draco Malfoy had excellent survivor's instincts; Harry had to give him that. He must have begun running from the room the moment he first hissed in rage, for he was the furthest away, reaching for the door where Yaxley had departed earlier. Twitchy, quick little ferret—but Harry was quicker. He caught him in the leg mid-step, his widened jaw clamping shut around the boy's thigh, piercing straight through flesh and bone—another anguished scream as Draco’s wand fell uselessly to the floor, the delicious taste of blood filling Harry’s serpentine mouth as venom flowed from him into his doomed, writhing victim—and _fear_ , the overwhelming smell of fear saturating the air, and it was intoxicating, that beautiful aroma—

Spells were being fired, and Harry found himself suddenly suspended in midair. He appeared to be floating in a transparent, glittering bubble. He vaguely noticed the frenzy unfolding in the room —people screaming, Snape's body bleeding out under the table, Draco howling in pain as his father loomed over him, the older Malfoy's anguished cry somehow even worse—

Harry hissed murderously in his containment, at being deprived from his killing spree. He thrashed against the magical barrier like the wild animal that he was, but then he felt another intruder enter into Nagini's body, fighting him for control—

_'Get out.'_

Voldemort's lethal tone normally would have been terrifying, but Harry was so oversaturated with hate that there was no room for fear. He felt the Dark Lord prying his influence away from Nagini's mind with a ruthless force. Harry thought madly of a memory he had of Dudley and his obnoxious friend from when he was younger, watching as the two boys fought over the controller to a video game Dudley owned that was only meant for one player. The image made Harry laugh in a dark, hysterical way—

 _'Never,'_ he snarled amid his crazed laughter. _'Never, I'll kill you all—'_

Nagini, for her part, was positively screeching in anguish. The poor creature was being mentally torn to shreds by the two maniacal wizards brimming with rage. Harry may have felt pity for her if he could feel anything other than fury.

 _'Get out!'_ Voldemort hissed again, and only now did Harry register the pain that had been building within him. Horrible, burning pain, the same sensation as before—white-hot, blinding—

 _'No!'_ Harry roared. But the pain was escalating at an unprecedented rate, and he knew he was out of his element. This was not his body; he was the invader, here, and Voldemort was far more skilled in the art of possession, especially when it concerned his own snake…

With one horrifically painful push, Harry was ripped from Nagini's body. Whiteness, jarring and abrupt and all-consuming, gripped him, and in an instant, it was over.

He was back in blank, white world.

* * *

Harry's mind was a tempest.

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

He stood, calm and still in the midst of the raging war of the elements around him. Thunder roared. Lightning flashed. Rain poured down in sheets, like icy bullets being fired down from the sky—

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

A flash of blinding light, and Harry felt his presence—

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

_'Go on, then.'_

Clear in his mind. Harry could hear the silky voice easily, despite the thunder. He ignored it, clawing his way up the metaphorical tunnel towards consciousness—close, so close—

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

Whiteness—and wind, the sound of wind, both in his mental storm and beyond—

_'Go towards consciousness.’_

The lightning flashed again, and for a moment Harry saw him—Tom Riddle, young and handsome and so very unreal—

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

He fought his way towards the light with a fierce vindication—he would do it, this time, he knew it—

_‘You can stay there…’_

Another flash, and this time it was Lord Voldemort, white skin and black robes and red, red eyes—and he started laughing; his serpentine features twisted in maniacal amusement… High-pitched, mirthless. Cold. It began softly, but soon began building into mad, hysterical laughter—

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

There it was, he nearly had it—Harry could feel his eyelids flutter, could see the light through real eyes—

_'…forever.'_

The storm was beneath him now, the laughter below… A moment of sudden silence, and the last words Harry heard echoed quietly in his mind. Deceptively soft and sweet.

_'Goodbye, Harry Potter.'_

* * *

Harry's ears were ringing.

He took in a slow, raspy breath. He twitched his foreign fingers; he curled his distant toes.

He was _awake._

Groggily, Harry opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back, and his body felt so heavy, so… _warm_ … That ringing sound, what was that ringing sound? Harry willed his blurry vision to focus on his surroundings, and as he reached out to feel beside him, he found his arms had little room to move… He was… He was _in_ something…

Adrenaline rushed through him at once, and he was properly awake in an instant.

Everything around him was white. As his vision became clear Harry realized it was snow that threatened to blind him with its pristine, vivid brilliance. Snow and ice everywhere, flat and endless—as far as the eye could see, a barren world of snow.

Where was he? If he had to hazard a guess, Harry would say this was the landscape of Antarctica, perhaps, based on the pictures he’d seen of such a place. It looked totally lifeless. The sky was as white as the ground below, barely discernible from the landscape.

He appeared to be in some sort of invisible, clear container, floating a few feet above the flat ground below. While Harry knew it should be literally freezing cold where he was, inside these glass walls he felt very warm, comfortable… He looked down at his body. He was completely naked. Harry tried to sit up, only to find that the box which he lay in apparently had a lid, and he had moved no less than an inch before his forehead collided with the surface.

And then he saw them. What looked like threads of light—thin as the strands of a spider's web, hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. Threads that attached to every pore in his skin, though he couldn't feel them at all. They clung to his eyelids; to his hands and legs; to his chest and back… Almost completely invisible when he was still, they reflected the light like prisms as he moved—a spectrum of rainbow colors shining across them as he attempted to shift.

Harry pushed upwards with his arms and legs on the transparent barrier, but it would not budge. Based on the shape of his container, and what a small range of motion he had, he came to a horrible, unwanted conclusion. The word floated to the forefront of his mind, unbidden—

_Coffin._

Hysterical panic like Harry had never known seized him.

He was in a magical, glass coffin, in a world that looked as though a human being had never once set foot in it. Harry thrashed about as much as his narrow containment would allow, horrible cries of fear tumbling out of his throat—but no matter how hard he tried he could not break the walls, could not escape… He could hardly even move…

The wind was a distant and monotonous ring. It was the kind of howling sound that accompanied such vast, empty landscapes, and it was the sound he had heard all along, that wind… though it could not touch him here, in his protected prison…

Then he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye, something that he had not even noticed before… There, by his feet, what looked like fabric almost, though it, too, was invisible, transparent as glass…

Harry's heart nearly stopped.

_His Invisibility Cloak._

He thought back to that morning on the Knight Bus, the memory burned into his mind forever—the last time he knew, with certainty, that he had been awake, truly awake. His knapsack on his lap as he contemplated his own reflection in the window; red, red eyes flashing before him, and his bag tumbling to the floor, which had contained his cloak… And now it was here, draped over his crystal coffin…

No one could see him.

He was probably literally as far away as he possibly could be from another living soul, in a world of ice and snow and endless white, and even if someone somehow managed to deduce that he was in this empty landscape, even if someone came close to where he was, they wouldn't be able to see him… No one would ever know he was here, no one would ever find him, not even—

_‘Death will never touch you.’_

And now… now he was _awake_. Completely aware, and powerless, and alone…

 _'…forever.'_ The echo of Voldemort's voice was like a dagger diving into his heart.

Harry screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed; thrashed as much as he possibly could against the walls of his narrow, transparent tomb, but even as he began to bloody his knuckles, the threads of prismatic light which clung to his skin healed him. They were keeping him permanently unscathed…

_…Alive…_

Trapped in the glass prison with his screams. Piercing and loud and horrible in his ears, bouncing off the walls of his tight containment. Harry Potter scratched and clawed at his coffin, to no avail…

_“Voldemort!”_

A shrill cry, the word filled with hate and fear and pleading and longing and so many endless, tangled emotions all at once…

_“Voldemort!”_

His captor, his enemy, his only hope. It seemed to be the only word his lips were capable of forming. There was no response. Nothing but the resonating wind in his endless world of white… Yet the name tore itself from his lips again, and again, and again…

_“Voldemort!”_


	6. Ablaze

_He fumbles at your Soul_  
As Players at the Keys  
Before they drop full Music on—  
He stuns you by degrees—

 __  
Prepares your brittle Nature  
For the Ethereal Blow  
By fainter Hammers—further heard—  
Then nearer—Then so slow

 __  
Your Breath has time to straighten—  
Your Brain—to bubble Cool—  
Deals—One—imperial Thunderbolt—  
That scalps your naked Soul—

_._

_Emily Dickinson_

_._

* * *

Lord Voldemort was victorious.

The wizarding world and all it had to offer was before him; its occupants prostrated and bowed, willing and subservient or otherwise destroyed. There were those who still defied him, it was true... Those who continued their futile attempts at derailing his grand plans still persisted, but the resistance was diminishing at an exponential rate, and soon, very soon, there would be none left whatsoever. Dumbledore was dead, the Order had no savior around which to rally, and before long the rebellious forces, just like the Statute of Secrecy, would crumble and fall.

'For the Greater Good' was a weak mantra in comparison to his, the much more appropriate and infinitely more substantial, 'Magic is Might'.

Yes, it _was_ … and in due time all the world would know the whole truth of it. His might, his vision, his vast and all-reaching _power_.

At long last, after so many years, Lord Voldemort finally had everything within his grasp. Ever increasing and expansive armies. Loyal, devoted followers. _Hogwarts_... The division of students into one of the four Founder's houses was a practice soon to be eradicated; the following academic year would show only Salazar Slytherin's emblem upon the castle banners… Green and silver alone would adorn its great halls and mighty corridors, and all would be united under his new reign…

Lord Voldemort had everything.

Everything.

Everything.

'…You're _obsessed_ with me, Tom…'

A wave of insuppressible fury threatened to make itself known on the features of his carefully composed, emotionless face.

Ghostly notes from piano songs never played haunted his waking thoughts with increasing frequency. An abstract, silent soundtrack to his otherwise meticulous and methodical life… and, on the rare occasions when he did sleep, now, those same seductive melodies infected his uneasy dreams…

Though sleep often evaded the Dark Lord.

More often than not, he would require some kind of draught to fall into slumber at all… Yet, fortuitously, Lord Voldemort did not actually need to sleep often. When it was necessary, he was fortunate enough to still have the servitude of an unprecedented brewer in his ranks, so eager and willing to produce for him any draught he may require at a moment's notice…

Yes, Severus Snape had miraculously clung to life that fateful day. The Dark Lord had been certain that he would be lost, the amount of venom in his blood was considerable… But fate favors Lord Voldemort. Despite the grave injuries that he had yet to fully recover from, Severus had been nothing but unwavering in his devotion towards his master once he had awoken.

However, while Sleeping Draughts would assist the Dark Lord in drifting into unconsciousness, not even the most powerful potion could prevent certain… _visions_ from occurring. But he knew that they were his own visions, at least, his own insuppressible, solitary dreams… Because _he_ could not sleep, not any longer; _he_ could no longer dream…

The smirk that played across Voldemort's thin lips was of the demented variety—the kind of vindictive grin which would typically terrify those unfortunate enough to witness it. But the Dark Lord was enjoying a night of solidarity this evening, content to relax in his private quarters…with the exception of Nagini, of course, who rested on the hearth near the fire. Voldemort watched her still form intently as he listened to the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock, the soft crackling of the flames. She was tightly coiled, unmoving and asleep… His precious pet… His precious soul…

…Precious soul…

'…You're _obsessed_ with me…'

Another ripple of rage in which a hiss involuntarily escaped from between his teeth. Nagini stirred, lazily lifting her large, diamond-scaled head to reveal crimson eyes so like his own. She looked towards him expectantly, confused by the sudden sound of his voice.

Voldemort clenched his fists. It was infuriating the way in which his thoughts unwillingly strayed…

He knew that he would, eventually, go to the boy. He had nearly gone several times already. But each time he would remember that particular phrase, recall that haughty expression—sparkling green eyes peering up at him, framed by a horrendously vibrant and inexplicable sunflower, wetted lips curling as they mouthed the word—

_'…Obsessed…'_

Voldemort's body would ignite in a fiery rage out at that dreamy recollection, and he would think better of it. Let him suffer longer. Let him learn to truly appreciate the wrath that is Lord Voldemort… Maybe, after a few weeks… Maybe then he would finally show mercy and let him go back to sleep… For at that point, he was certain, there would be no resistance. The boy would do anything to avoid returning to consciousness, to that confined world of white in which he lay trapped in an enchanted, crystal coffin… A blindingly bright wasteland of snow and ice, the only sound apart from the distant, howling wind he could possibly hear his own, desperate voice… His cursed lips only able to utter a single word…

_Voldemort._

Beautiful, luscious screams. While he refused to go to him yet—the release him from the hell which was his punishment—the Dark Lord could not help but listen in on the sound of his name on The Chosen One's lips.

It was almost poetic, truly, how their names had evolved. After having a Taboo placed on the name of the _Undesirable_ , it occurred to Lord Voldemort that he ought to place the same curse on his own. Only those who defied him dared to call him by his true name, after all. By doing so—as well as by hiring witches and wizards loyal to his cause and desperate for gold to hunt these foolish enemies—they had captured dozens of rebellious muggle-borns and even a few members of the Order. No; no one could utter either the name of the Boy Who Lived nor the Dark Lord without suffering dire consequences.

…Except the Boy Who Lived himself.

Perhaps it was the cruelest part of his punishment, making it so the boy could say nothing but his name out loud, the Taboo unaffected when spoken within that enchanted, crystal cage—but the Dark Lord was hardly sympathetic. For as much as it infuriated him when others dared to say his name out loud, the Dark Lord _adored_ it when the Boy Who Lived screamed it in desperation.

_‘Voldemort!’_

Choirs of angels could never sound so sweet; all the cherubim and seraphim in the heavens could not hold a candle to those intoxicating, blood-curdling screeches… A mesmerizing melody, and even now he could hear it as it he recalled that breaking voice, interwoven with those ghostly notes, and he could see pale fingers dancing deftly along piano keys, black and white and perfect—

But he had stopped screaming.

Days and days ago...

Voldemort stood, feeling both frustrated and oddly anxious. Nagini was properly awake now. She slithered over to him, always so eager to quell his agitation. His precious pet, so very deferential and resolute in her affection towards her master… She silently slid up and on to his shoulders in what was her favorite position, draping her long body around him like some heavy, living adornment. Voldemort let her as he attempted to suppress the vexatious emotions bolstering inside him. He began to absent-mindedly stroke the creature around his neck, and he felt the embers of his agitation begin to slowly die. He sank back down into the comfort of his armchair before the crackling fire. The grandfather clock in the corner continued to tick methodically, and he found the predictable, rhythmic sound soothing…

…tick…tick…tick…

"…Does it bother you?"

Voldemort was on his feet again in an instant, wand held high. That voice— _his_ voice—but no one was there.

"Feeling it? And not understanding?"

From the other side of the room now, the same direction as the ticking clock. Voldemort turned so quickly that Nagini nearly slid off his thin shoulders. She contorted ungracefully to remain aloft, an agitated hiss reverberating in the depths of her throat.

Nothing. No one.

 _'Masssster…?'_ she hissed in confusion, annoyance, and, above all else—concern.

Voldemort ignored her. His heart was racing in a dilapidated, frenzied way… He must have imagined it; it was the only possible explanation…

And then he saw them.

Reflected on the silver surface of the full-length mirror on the wall, staring, a penetrating gaze fixated on him—those green, green eyes—

"It must."

This time, when he turned, he was there. Leaning against the doorframe, exceptionally casual. For a fractional moment, Voldemort was frozen in disbelief. The intruder smiled. Green eyes shone from behind foul, lopsided spectacles almost playfully.

"Impossible," Voldemort hissed. But there was something else that alarmed him even more than the inexplicable presence of the Undesirable in his private quarters. It was the visceral reaction that happened in the pit of his stomach upon seeing him again after so long; a feeling that was accompanied by a burning sensation rather like a heat wave, rising…

It was not entirely unpleasant.

"Impossible that Harry James Potter is here in your dreams?" he said, smirking. Voldemort's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Ah. Yes, you're dreaming—and yes, you're right. That _is_ impossible. You made certain of that." His words, which were at first spoken so nonchalantly, ended on a bitter note.

Voldemort continued to point his wand at his chest, his expression wary. "This is merely a dream," he concluded, though he was still, for some reason, reluctant to believe it.

"Of course it is," the boy said, taking a step towards him. "You know that. You know that I could not possible really be him, seeing as you've cursed him with permanent wakefulness… among other things."

Voldemort forced his alarmed thoughts into something linear, logical. He noticed suddenly that Nagini was gone from his shoulders. His wand, too, had vanished.

Yes. This was, in fact, a dream.

"…I'm merely your subconscious." The boy smiled again, and Voldemort felt another intense wave of that bizarre, foreign heat flooding his veins.

Voldemort glowered. "And what is it that my subconscious wishes to tell me?" he asked drily, lowering his wand. There was no need to threaten his own thoughts, after all… even if they did happen to be in the irrational form of Harry Potter.

Never before had the boy physically manifested in his dreams. Not like this.

"We'll get there. We have plenty of time to chat, after all. You only just took that sleeping draught."

At those word, as if in confirmation, the grandfather clock in the corner seemed to get louder.

…tick…tick…tick…

Voldemort's hairless brows furrowed. Yes, he suddenly recalled, that was true; he had taken another dosage this evening… Although now he was wishing that he had taken a _dreamless_ version of the brew. The boy—or his subconscious, as it were—approached him unflinchingly.

"Does what bother me?" Voldemort asked this time, his voice low and lethal. "There is very little that Lord Voldemort does not understand."

"Yeah, you're right about that," Harry said jubilantly. "And you're learning more and more every day, despite how much it will surely irk you when you finally accept the _undesirable_ conclusion… Tell me something."

He then did something very, very unexpected. Harry quickly leaned forward and brushed his lips against the exposed skin of Voldemort's pale neck—and the heat, that strange feeling burst forth with an unprecedented rush, white hot and all-consuming—

"…What do you think that is?" Harry's voice was husky. His breath danced across the Dark Lord's skin, soft and warm.

Voldemort did not react, but he did not need to ask for clarification about what Harry meant by 'that'. The peculiar, near-dizzying warmth…

"Desire," Voldemort answered in a detached way. "Warranted desire, as Harry Potter belongs to _me_ , and contains a fragment of _my_ soul."

Harry laughed. The Dark Lord resisted the urge to grip his hair and claim him, to crash his lips into his and swallow the sound of that laughter whole.

"Wrong. Well, not completely wrong, but definitely not the whole truth," Harry crooned, and if Voldemort hadn't been completely convinced this was a dream before, he was now. It was a tone of voice that sounded exceptionally foreign coming from the Potter boy's lips.

"Explain," Voldemort demanded, impatient and bothered.

Harry just smiled even brighter as he took a step back. "The horcrux is only a part of it, even if that has always been the explanation you've given yourself thus far, the excuse for your straying thoughts…" He paused a moment for dramatic effect, smile widening enough to expose his surprisingly white, even teeth.

 _'…We are bound now by both blood and soul…'_ " Harry recited eerily, recounting Voldemort's words from dreams long ago.

The Dark Lord said nothing. Harry's smile became almost malicious, like he was in on some joke that, he, Lord Voldemort, was too slow to grasp.

His fury was mounting. "Explain," Voldemort seethed again, unwilling to play these verbal games… with himself, he realized.

This was not _really_ Harry Potter…

The boy traced a finger under his own chin, and he looked both amused at Voldemort's rage and oddly contemplative. The clock ticked louder in the corner, and the Dark Lord was beginning to find it distracting. "Let's start from the beginning," Harry finally said, clapping his hands together.

"The prophecy."

The Dark Lord's eyes narrowed, but he did not interrupt. "If you'll recall,” Harry went on, “it said, 'He will have power the Dark Lord knows not…'" Harry paused. Voldemort remained silent. "And what was it? That supposed 'power'?" Harry prompted.

"Ancient protective magic, imparted on the child by the sacrificed life of the mudblood woman." Voldemort said snappishly.

"Yes, but what _was_ that ancient magic? Not just anyone could give their life and have it protect someone else from a killing curse, especially not one cast by Lord Voldemort himself."

Harry's eyes were practically radiating with delight as he forced the Dark Lord to say it out loud. "…Love,” Voldemort spat, the word like bitter poison on his tongue.

"Yes," Harry agreed, nodding. "Love. That is what saved Harry Potter that night. The love of his mother and the sacrifice of her life. You accept all of these statements as facts, yes?"

When Voldemort said nothing, Harry continued, those brilliant irises glittering. "So. Harry Potter became the Boy Who Lived. And because of that protective magic in his veins, you, Lord Voldemort could not touch him."

"A temporary barrier. An obstacle which was easily overcame when I took his blood in order to regain a corporal form," Voldemort sneered. But to his surprise, this made Harry look even more gleeful.

"Precisely. Yes, very good. Harry Potter's blood. Lily Evan's protective enchantment, now also within you. _Love_."

Voldemort stared at him flatly, his marble white face frozen and detached. Harry laughed. "Oh, don't be so willingly ignorant. You're one of the most intelligent wizards in existence; you already knew where this was headed several snappish comments ago. You've known for a while, really, deep, deep down in your subconscious…" He gestured theatrically down at himself, as though the gesture alone was a perfectly logical explanation. When Voldemort still refused to react, he sighed, exasperated.

"When you took Harry Potter's blood into your veins, you got way more than you bargained for. You feel it… in your veins, in your pounding, thrumming heart… in your fractured soul. You feel it, even if it is only toward one person in all of existence. You didn't recognize it for a long time, because you'd never known what it was, you'd never experienced it… You didn't know… but _now_ you do, _now_ you can…"

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, reaching out his hands, and for a warped moment Voldemort thought he was going to lean forwards and embrace him—but then the boy began moving his fingers horizontally along the empty air, playing an invisible, non-existent piano…

And though no piano was there in the room, Voldemort could hear the ghostly notes, muted and echoing in the back of his mind; an erratic, passionate melody being played in time with the ticking of the clock, which now acted as some kind of strange metronome…

After a few moments, Harry opened his eyes, pausing in his playing. The precise color of the curse of death, but shining with vibrant, radiant life. He stared into the Dark Lord's own gaze unblinkingly. The last notes he’d played still lingered in the air, echoing.

"Love."

As if to prove it, before Voldemort could react, Harry moved closer to him, and Voldemort felt that rush of feverish heat rising up in droves—Harry’s hands remained aloft, nearly but not quite touching the Dark Lord’s chest—

"More than desire. More than lust. You've always been obsessed with Harry Potter, that's an inarguable fact—but that obsession was magnified a thousand times when you took his blood, and now, now it's coursing through you, whether you want it or not, you can't rid yourself of it—" He lifted his head to put his mouth close, incredibly, dangerously close to Voldemort's, just a hair's breadth away—

"You love him." A small, breathy laugh against his lips. " _Me_."

Voldemort let out a disgusted growl, despite the thundering of his heart and the crazed heat wave of desire burning like molten lava in his chest. "Preposterous," he fumed, retreating a few steps back from the outrageous form of Harry Potter, his supposed subconscious. "Impossible. Lord Voldemort does not feel such petty, frivolous emotions."

"Oh, _sure_ ," the boy said, laughing as he put his hands up in a mocking defensive gesture. "You're just lying to yourself, you know."

Voldemort opened his mouth to once more deny that ridiculous accusation, but then decided to voice a different concern instead. "Why is it that Harry Potter has appeared in my dreams now, when I have never dreamed of him so completely before?" he asked quietly, as much to the otherwise empty room as to the person in front of him.

Harry grinned coyly. "Because I, your subconscious… I am trying to tell you something."

Voldemort did not take the bait. He waited, barely suppressing another growl.

"Something very, very important…" Harry said slowly, teasingly. The clock ticked ominously in the background.

"…What?" Voldemort finally snapped.

Harry did not answer, only continued to grin gloatingly. He began to play his ghost piano again. The music was much higher this time, that sickly sweet, playful tune…

Voldemort did snarl, then. "What? What is so important that—"

"You're losing me."

Harry froze. The music died. His voice was so quiet when he interrupted that Voldemort almost did not hear it.

"—that—what?"

Harry let his extended arms drop slowly to his side, waiting for the anxiety to trickle into the Dark Lord's awareness before speaking again. "You're losing me. Right now. Someone has been looking for me, and today, tonight, while you're sleeping—very soon—they will finally find me."

Voldemort's face betrayed his initial feeling of shock at this statement only for a moment, but then he laughed. A high pitched, mirthless sound. "Impossible," he said dismissively. "No one else in this world knows I even hold Harry Potter, let alone where he is located… and in addition to this, the protective enchantments I have in place around the boy are indestructible."

Voldemort knew this with unquestioning certainty. He had told no one of the whereabouts of the Potter boy, as well as placed extremely powerful barriers around his horcrux—not to mention the use of his own Invisibility Cloak, draped carefully over his crystal cage. Which, truly, had not been strictly… necessary. The Dark Lord had disillusioned the casket, regardless... Using his own cloak against him had really been more for his own sadistic amusement...

But Harry looked nonplussed at this reaction. After a moment he just grinned again, suddenly pointing a finger upwards.

"Let's review," he said in a sarcastic, faux-academic tone. "Lily Potter. She loved her son, was capable of incredible love… as we all are. Including even you, because you took my blood—and inadvertently, the power of her love for me—into your own veins through ancient, ritualistic magic. Which you probably should have thought through more." He gave Voldemort a quick, shrewd look before continuing. "But who else do we know that had a connection to Lily Potter?"

Voldemort, despite feeling exasperated and annoyed by this entire conversation, allowed himself to—briefly—contemplate the answer to this question. "There were many witches and wizards associated with the foul mudblood," he answered in a clipped voice.

"List some for me," Harry said. He was clearly enjoying himself far too much. Voldemort refused to comply.

…tick…tick…tick…

"Fine." Harry said, frowning. "I'll make the question less vague. Who did you and Lily Potter share an intimate connection with? At least, to some degree. Who was a link between the two of you?"

Voldemort tilted his head slightly to one side. "…Severus Snape harbored an affection for the mudblood at one point… but it was an ill-placed affection, which he later admitted himself…"

"Ha!" Harry shouted the word in his face. "An ill-placed affection? He _loved_ her. He loved her, and you murdered her. You may have been ignorant enough to believe his lies before, that he dismissed her, moved on… but you know better now. _Now_ you know what love feels like…" Voldemort shook his head uneasily, though there was growing sense of trepidation building in his chest, winding its way up his spine…

"True love makes people do daring, crazy things; it drives people to risk their lives in unprecedented ways,” Harry said passionately. “You know this better than anyone! you've used this knowledge to your advantage many, many times. Even when you did not feel it yourself, you knew—and knew the power of love."

Voldemort was silent, the dawning realization a sinister shadow on his soul.

"He loved her, Tom. He loved her, he asked you not to kill her, _begged_ you, and you killed her anyway."

Harry took a step closer to him, but Voldemort took a step back, shaking his head, disbelieving.

"You killed her. She died to save her son… What else could Snape do to avenge her but live for her, honor her final act—to protect her son, and, one day, help to finish you…" Harry kept advancing, relentless, backing Voldemort into the wall, and when he spoke again his next words were whispered  into Dark Lord’s ear, his voice low and soft.

"Snape is not yours…"

"Lies!" Voldemort finally broke, shoving Harry away from him forcefully. "Impossible! I would know—Lord Voldemort could not be unknowingly betrayed—"

"You're not infallible," Harry said coldly. "Snape is just as good at Occlumency as you are. And he's always had the driving force of passionate, undying love behind him, while you have the flaw of great arrogance. It was your downfall once and will be again. Severus Snape is not yours. He has been Dumbledore's man ever since you killed Lily Potter. Even the act of killing Dumbledore himself—he did that on _his_ orders, not yours. Dumbledore was already dying. You know it. You know this is the truth. And now…"

The horror was torrential. It hit the Dark Lord before the whole realization did.

"Who's been giving you sleeping draughts this whole time?" Harry asked quietly.

_No…_

"So very _eager_ to serve his Lord, even while he has yet to recover from his grievous injuries issued to him, as far as he is aware, by _your_ pet snake… feverishly subservient to the point where he would not even allow another Death Eater to prepare for you a simple sleeping draught…suspiciously subservient, one might say…"

_No…_

"What do you think he's been doing during those periods of time when you've been asleep? Severus Snape, so willing to serve you at a moment's notice, even encouraging you to rest _more_ … just so that he could conduct his search for Harry Potter in secret, knowing exactly when you would be unconscious, and for how long…"

_No…_

"Can you feel it?" Harry looked up meaningfully.

Voldemort _could_ feel it. Even in his unconscious state.

The wards.

"They're breaking apart as we speak," Harry confirmed softly, his eyes still staring upwards. "All of your magical defenses, all of the protective barriers you've put in place to protect your human horcrux… He's breaking them apart right now, while he knows you sleep, unable to wake." Harry lowered his eyes slowly, and when his piercing gaze finally landed on Voldemort, it was a twisted, malevolent grin that formed on his lips.

"Beautiful irony…"

"No," Voldemort gasped. The rhythmic chiming of the grandfather clock, which he had found so soothing earlier, now felt like hammers being driven into his skull.

…tick…tick…tick…

How could he have possibly deduced where the Dark Lord had hidden Harry Potter? But there was no denying it, now—he could feel the shrill alarm bells of his own protective enchantments blaring—the kind of warning that, under normal circumstances, would alert him to the presence of a magical entity in the vicinity of his horcrux's hiding place, waking him at once… But now, under the suffocating weight of the sleeping draught given to him by Severus Snape…

Severus Snape. Like a switch, the dread transitioned into blinding, white-hot rage. It licked at his insides like raging flames against his heart.

Voldemort's mind was a tempest.

The room around them violently broke apart, struck by an imperial bolt of blindingly bright lightning. Darkness fell. Thunder roared.

Harry, shrouded by the sudden blackness of the night, began laughing. Soft, at first, but it steadily began growing into something bordering on hysterical.

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

"Infuriating, isn't it?" he muttered, but Voldemort was done listening—he instead put forth all his energy, all of his almighty power into regaining consciousness—

"Go on, then," Harry crooned, vindictive and malicious. Voldemort's own piercing words now being speared back at him like daggers.

"Go towards consciousness."

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

He was clawing at the tunnel towards wakefulness with a ferocity unknown to him before, rage and fury and all of it was laced with just a touch of panic—

Harry was openly laughing; his voice was being tossed about chaotically in the winds of the storm. But Voldemort could easily hear him, despite the roar of the deafening thunder. "Yes, it's rather difficult, that ascension… and Snape is no fool; he surely gave you an especially potent potion… perhaps even closer to, say, the _Draught of Living Death_..."

A horrible, monstrous shriek of laughter at that statement. A thunderbolt of godly proportions struck the ground around him, and fire ignited—raging flames born of his own boiling hatred were racing in cyclones about them, flying chaotically on the wings of his violent, mental winds—

"You should have let Nagini's venom kill him. Harry Potter would have sealed his own fate, but _you saved Snape_ …"

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

More sinister, hysterical laughter. "You saved him! You saved him, and now he's going to take away your precious horcrux!"

The scream was ear-splitting, like glass shattering violently in his ears. Harry sighed at the sound. "Retribution…" he said softly, but Voldemort's fierce efforts were paying off. He was getting closer to the light that was cognizance…

"…I wonder if he'll kill me," Harry said. His voice was suddenly solemn, cold.

Deadened.

"No," Voldemort hissed involuntarily. Somehow, the overwhelming anger and dread, which were already saturating every fiber of his being, became worse with those words. "Your life is too precious."

"Touching," Harry said hollowly. "I suspect he will. He knows what I am."

Somehow, the conversation had taken on a drastically different tone. Harry's sneering arrogance was gone, replaced now by the grave voice of a broken boy. The sound broke something in Voldemort, too.

Was this his subconscious, truly?

"No—"

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

The light was getting brighter—

"You won't make it in time."

_—Wake up wake up wake up—_

"You've lost me, Tom…"

It was there, consciousness—he could feel the weight of his body… the flaming storm, the flashing lightning—all of it was below him, and he was teetering on the verge… his heavy eyelids slowly blinking in the light…

The tempest grew silent, but Harry's last words rang in his ears, deceptively soft and… empty.

"Goodbye, Tom."

* * *

_"…Severus…."_

The moment he was truly awake, Voldemort immediately dismantled the anti-apparition wards around his quarters. He sent out a searing pain towards his Potions Master, summoning him in the most agonizing way. With a mere thought, the Dark Mark on Snape's forearm would be like a white hot iron burning into his skin…

Severus did not appear.

He left at once.

Voldemort disapparated, transporting himself to the other side of the world in an instant. The rage inside of him was an inferno; he would destroy Snape, tear him apart limb from limb, rip, tear, _kill_ —

The tempest of his mind was nothing compared to what awaited him.

_Fire._

Fire, fire everywhere. In the form of insatiable monsters, chimeras and dragons made entirely of flames tore across the vast, white wasteland. They consumed nothing but snow and ice yet continued to flourish on the impossible sustenance. A vicious, blazing basilisk reared its gargantuan head in Voldemort’s direction, its scorching eyes fixed on him hungrily—the serpent lunged towards him with lightning speed, feverish in its desire for new, better kindling to feed its unquenchable body composed of fire… Voldemort apparated before he was nearly caught in its burning jaws, incinerated by scorching teeth—

He reappeared at a safe distance, staring disbelievingly at the sea of Fiendfyre which spread across an incredible stretch of land.

Impossible…

The encasement which held his horcrux— _his precious soul_ —was directly in the center of that lake of fire, this hell on earth… All his wards were broken, all of the barriers and obstacles he had created were triggered and gone, dismantled and wrecked…

Impossible…

The damning comprehension that nothing, absolutely _nothing_ could withstand a monumental inferno of this scale was one which Voldemort refused to accept—but he could sense no life there in the midst of those flames, none at all—

"Severus…" he hissed again, murder in his voice as he once more sent waves of insurmountable pain towards his traitorous follower. His vision flashed red, bathing the world of white in a bloody tint.

_'He knows what I am.'_

How had he known?

_'You've lost me, Tom…'_

The frenzy of hatred suddenly imploded, and the Dark Lord was filled instead with a sensation which he had never experienced before in his entire existence. All the heat and passion and fury which had flooded his veins and heart seemed to turn, at once, into ice.

The staggering emotions made nausea course through him in waves, and his red world was oddly off balance, twisting to one side in a strange way… Rage was undeniably still present, but it was eclipsed almost completely by this new, terrible sensation, heavy and cold in his very core, and it dragged him down to his knees… Voldemort hit the icy ground and his body felt nothing… He stared out into the vast lake of fire but saw only a boy, wild hair and smooth skin and green, green eyes—

Lost to the inferno.

This horrific feeling was worse than anything he had ever experienced; it was raw and cold and it consumed him… Voldemort’s entire world was this pain, this feeling of suffocating loss—this feeling, this —

_'…Love.'_

The inhuman howl of unbidden, unwelcome grief that clawed its way out of him was like no sound that had ever ripped its way up the throat of Lord Voldemort, clinging to his lips and tearing into the empty air. It was incomprehensible; a continuous, strangled cry—passionate and raw and utterly debilitating. It filled the vast, white world and echoed in circles around him, haunting cries which eventually became a part of the distant, ever-present wind.

The inferno continued to blaze.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was posted once, all three installments of it, many moons ago. You might have read that version. If you have, then you can already glean that this one is different. This is how I would have written the series if I had known what I was getting into then. Many things will be the same. Some things will not. 
> 
> If you were on board before, I hope you enjoy round 2. If this story is new to you... welcome.


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